From www.ChopStork.com
This was originally a 2003 Twleve Drinking Days of Christmas email
Here is a little account of my TDDoC adventures from Tokyo. The Far East Coast TDDoC, if you will. Tuesday around 1PM I was bored, looking for something to do. "I wonder what's going on back in California," I thought to myself. After some quick calculations, I determined that it was 8PM Monday CA time ... right about drinking time. Light bulb. I'm gonna go get me a beer. I pulled my brother, Hampton, away from
Space Penguins to join me in my quest. What bar's gonna be open at 1PM, he asks. Good point. ...... Light bulb #2. Japan has soda machines, except with beer in them! And the beer quest was on.
But my mom hears this and says she hasn't seen one in a long time, "Didn't they get rid of them?" What?!?
What were they thinking!? I did some research, and sure enough...
confirmation. But there was still hope - 30% were still around. The internet has all the answers, so I googled
their locations.
You can't read that? Dammit, neither can I. Our only hope left was to let our instincts lead us to the beer machine, so we went a huntin'.
We headed off by foot to Roppongi around 1:30.
Me heading off to Roppongi by foot:
That says, "AMERICAN EMBASSY" in big letters on my sweatshirt. I thought to myself, Probably not a good idea what with all the terror alerts recently. It's ok, the terrorists can't read Japanese. Back to the beer machine.
Things were looking bleak. Vending machines everywhere, but not one with beer. Then I spotted something, "There's an Asahi one!" Hampton again the wiser, "It's Asahi Softdrinks." Mother $h1tter! Come on, not one of these has beer???
We walked, and walked .... and walked. Along the way we ran across some
Santa Clauses on bikes. Them crazy Japs. And they park their
tiny little cars really really close together. Intriguing, but still no beer machine. We scoured the bar streets and back alleys to no avail. Our armpits sweaty and feet sore, we gave up on Roppongi and made our way to Akasaka. We need a mom and pop liquor store - Akasaka will have one.
And sure enough, we came upon a mom and pop liquor store. But along side were more soda machines. Crap. We were ready to give up and get a beer at the 7-11. We turned the corner, and there it was, lights gleaming - a
gift from heaven. Except it
really looked like this, lights dim from years of dedication. Two hours after our trip began, we'd
found it.
The rest needs little explanation. Hampton got his favorite, Asahi Super Dry. I went with the Kirin Ichiban. Tallboy please, thank you. This one's staying out of my pants. Clinkies! Mmmmmmmm. And look, there's one for little people too.
Image:2003-12-23 beerquest11.JPG
On the way home we ran across a
map, so we documented the location for future reference. Left hand marks home. Beer marks beer. We also ran across a fountain, so I cleaned
me dirty bum.
And that concluded our successful outing in search of the great beer machine.
A.J.
