Standing Drink Bar「Tenbun」Old Boys Reunion 立ち呑みの居酒屋「天文」O.B. 会

We were on the bus, traveling through the borderlands between Osaka and Kyoto Prefectures when the imojōchū began to kick in.

We had just finished an hour-and-a-half of “all you can eat/all you can drink” at a traditional izakaya banquet. This kind of gluttonous binging and imbibing pushes participants, especially those on a pensioner’s budget with little left over after pachinko and horse race betting activities, to extremes, to make sure they get their money’s worth. Since the food turned out to be only standard fare, we concentrated on the drinking: beer, sake (nihonshu) and sweet potato distilled liquor (imojōchū; usually 25-35% alcohol).

A half hour in we were getting livelier and louder, and receiving dirty looks and disapproving frowns from the shop staff and other customers. Our severs were stingy, only allowing us to order a new drink after giving up the empty vessel from the previous beverage. Some of us countered this policy by pouring alcohol into PET bottles and plastic bags for secret take-out. We drank steadily until the last order. Somehow, we all were able to stand, pay our portions of the bill, use the toilet and stumble to the return bus without too much trouble.

What started out as a gathering of long-lost friends taking a short trip on a privately rented bus with quiet small talk of recent illnesses, hospitalizations and deceased drinking companions, was now a drunken cacophony of laughing, shouting, quiz games and attempts at singing enka. We exited the bus at the Keihan Kuzuha train station, took a memorial photo and made our way to the shopping arcade, formerly the aged, everyman Norengai (“Noren Street”), home to several traditional eating and drinking establishments. Recently this arcade was gentrified and renamed “El Kuzuha.” The older shops, many of which closed due to COVID-19, were conveniently replaced with fashionable chain restaurants. We wandered through the corridors until deciding on an acceptable pub for our continued revelry.

This post-fieldwork encounter chronicles a reunion of the owner and regular customers (the O.B.s or Old Boys) of a 40-year-old tachinomiya (“standing drink bar”) in Osaka called Tenbun, that closed in 2020.

Imojōchū has a strong taste and pungent smell, even when mixed with ice and water. For me, drinking it results in a contemplative body buzz; but when combined with beer and sake, the odoriferous contemplation turns into a gregarious stupidity. Nonetheless, this can be fun with the right people at the right time.

The Tenbun O.B. reunion was such a righteous group and occasion.

After all, we were trying to resurrect something. Not a specific time, place, feeling, memory or dream. Something more, perhaps a sort of fluid liminal communitas (and I do not use these terms lightly) that, in the past, we could enter at will, or at least between Tenbun’s usual business hours Monday through Saturday. The hour of day (or night), people, circumstances, jokes, arguments, daily specials and drinks always varied and at the same time enmeshed to create this familiar something. Looking back, I can see how we took it for granted, the longest-term customers for as long as 40 years. But now we missed it. And we wanted it back, even if only for this one day.

Of course, none of the O.B.s explained the reunion in these terms, except for the over-analyzing anthropologist with a camera, soaking in another post-fieldwork experience. Ba…

To be continued…

Announcement: New Book Release「Teaching Japan: A Handbook」

Teaching Japan: A Handbook. Ioannis Gaitanidis and Gregory S. Poole, eds. 2024. Japan Documents (MHM Limited, Tokyo).

For more information: https://www.mhmjapandocuments.com/copy-of-handbook-of-jpn-public-admin

Perhaps of special interest to visual and multimodal anthropologists:

Chapter 15 The Visual Anthropology of Japan: In and Outside the Classroom, p. 243-258.

There are a lot of great chapters from excellent teachers, researchers and authors in this book. I am honored to have been included in Teaching Japan. And I am grateful to the editors (Ioannis and Greg) for their exceptional enthusiasm, encouragement, support and and hard work.