Working in train stations, I often witness the aftermath of alcohol consumption. There’s the plain evidence of platform puke and shitty underwear, in addition to more subtle signs: for example, some mornings the diaper-change table in the disabled toilet has been left unfolded like a bed, right next to trash from a private beer party. This very afternoon, I saw a guy the worse for wear, hunched in a suit, vomiting behind a vending machine like a cross between a cat and a businessman.
I made sure he was okay and he went to rest on a seat while I poured a pile of absorbent pellets on top of his regurgitated lunch.
Certain larger stations have near-resident groups of older and unemployed people that congregate outside, sipping on booze from before midday. I don’t dislike these folk, whose primary mission is chatting shit all day, because they’re generally quite amiable. But I do suspect them of being willfully useless, some of them, misfits-by-choice whose sole engagement five hundred years ago would have been taunting the town donkey.
I was told by a coworker that these gaggles of boozers live off the state and receive welfare as good as a pension, possibly by claiming some kind of intractable financial helplessness. In one town I pass through, they bring a stereo, blasting tunes and smoking late into the night.
I dare say some station-pukers and toilet-nappers are alcoholics, and others not. My understanding of alcoholism is that it is a condition that makes it hard for a person to stop drinking once they have begun, a tendency for long bouts of self-destructive imbibement to ensue from that first, deadly sip.
Japan, in general, does not seem to grasp alcoholism, at least not to the same extent as the West. When I meet with confusion, I explain it thusly:
Imagine there’s a person who plays pachinko (a pinball gambling game that ruins lives in Japan). He goes all the time, spending his money. Sometimes he tries to stop but he ends up back in the parlour. He loses his house, his wife and children, his car and even his beloved dog. Every penny he has goes in the machines until, finally, he is destitute. Would you tell this man, when there’s money in his pocket again, that it would okay for him to try pachinko once more, just a little bit? Or would you tell him to quit entirely, given what happened to him every other time he played?
At this point, the Japanese person I am talking to says something like ‘Ah, yes, I see. If something has got that bad, you should give it up altogether.’
It’s easy not to quit here, though, if you want to carry on drinking. Convenience stores sell alcohol 24 hours a day, and public consumption is accepted. You can drink in the street, in the park or on the train and no one will berate you for having an open alcohol container. Perhaps due to a deeply ingrained culture of politeness, Japanese people rarely become aggressive when drunk, meaning that public intoxication is seen as a mild and non-threatening, very minor nuisance.
The Japanese, with their stiff office culture, use alcohol to unwind with colleagues after work, breaking down the barriers between them by banging back a few together. Some of these nights out are semi-official company events called ‘nomikai’ (literally ‘drinking meet’), at which younger recruits, in particular, might overdo it trying to fit in. There are stories, too, of ‘alcohol harassment’, which is when bosses pressure their underlings to consume more than they want to. In my twenty years in this country, I have seen a lot of salarymen in a lot of very sloppy states, but, still, have never been the target of aggression from them or anyone else.
That’s not to say the Japanese are all happy drunks. I’m sure this country has its fair share of alcohol-fueled domestic abuse and depression behind closed doors, but my impression is that the pollution of public spaces with anger and fear is enduringly taboo. You can fall over in them, and throw up, but screaming matches and fist fights must stay in the private realm. Public disorder is further suppressed, no doubt, by the fact that big conurbations are brightly lit and well-policed.
Back to the train stations, I always feel safe working in them. Admittedly, I do day shifts but I am yet to run into a shitfaced, chanting and aggressive group of sports fans, idiots harassing the other commuters, or a single mouthy wide boy or high school kid who wants to heckle the foreign cleaner. Nothing violent has happened at all, and I have seen and experienced no verbal abuse. Inebriated people do use the transport system, but they are incredibly few and far between (Vending Machine Vomit Man may have been the only one I’ve seen, in fact), and the sole concern they give me is that they might fall and get hurt.
By the way, this reminds me… They told me, when I was first employed, that there were night shifts, and these pay time-and-a-third. Because I need the extra money, I might ask for some late work, and I wonder if that way I’ll meet more fuck-ups.
Or at least find out who’s sleeping on the diaper-change table.
You can read Part 21 here.
And the previous part of this series… here.
I assume Japan still has vending machines that sell alcohol.
I enjoy learning about Japan from this series. I like that your writing is consistent and often makes me laugh. Thanks for sharing.