Ep. 04 The Style of Evening Drinks

Written by Cordelia Shan, edited by Grace

In this episode, we are going to talk about one of late night dorama, 2022, summer, The Style of Evening Drinks (晩酌の流儀).

Listen to full episode :

The Style of Evening Drinks (晩酌の流儀). This dorama was aired on TV Tokyo, from July 2nd to August 20th from 12:52 to 1:23 am 8 episodes in total. There will be a new year special episode airing on December 30, 2022 Japan time, which is today in North American time. By the way, many good food related shows air at that time slot, and we will touch on them in later episodes.

The Style of Evening Drinks tells a story about our main character, Miyuki (who works at a real estate company, Hop Housing), and what she does to improve her dinner drinking experience during the evening, after a hard-working day. In each episode, Miyuki goes through the day, from preparing food, and getting her body in good condition for a relaxing time of drinking later that evening. The opening line of this dorama is - after watching each episode, you must start drinking as well.

This dorama definitely shows people how to drink healthier.

So, lets go and take a look at Miyuki’s evening drinking flow.

First of all, Miyuki only drinks on the night before her day off. Because she does well at her job, she does not want anything to negatively affect her professional life.

Then, sometimes on the morning of the drinking day, she places two beer glasses in the fridge with beer together. In this way, when you open the beer at night and pour it into a similar cold temperature glass, it brings out the best flavour from the beer.

At work, she focuses and works hard, and refuses to do any overtime or extra task. She leaves work at 6 pm sharp, and before shopping for her dinner’s ingredients, she has other things to do, such as getting her body ready for drinking. For instance, she may find a way to make her body sweat a lot.

So, she does a workout by choosing a hill path to speed walk home, kick boxing, going to the sauna, or running. And she also doesn’t drink any water from 6pm onwards, because that will help make her body appreciate the beer more.

Then she goes to local grocery store to choose fresh and healthy ingredients with a discount. She goes home, takes a shower, then prepares the food.

Once the food is ready, she pours the beer in the cold glass, and without eating anything, drinks the cold beer like a fish.

You might wonder, would this actually work?

I would yes, because I personally did the same and tried some of Miyuki’s suggestions from the show this year, and i have to say, working out and sweating a lot before drinking does bring the drinking experience to another level. All the recipes I learnt from this dorama are a great and easy food to make, for example, Family style Chinese food, frozen gyoza dumplings with ginger, duck Nanban soba, Korean cuisine, tomato sukiyaki. And all of them also go well with beer, wine, and also sake. After trying her suggestions several times, drinking is not just food to me, but it’s also self-care and a relaxing routine at night as a young professional 😊

You might have already noticed that a lot of Japanese doramas talk about drinking, or you might have heard about Japanese drinking culture already. There is definitely a commercial factor behind the drinking/social culture in Japan. Drinking after work was popular during the economic bubble period, from 1986 to 1991 in Japan, and it is still a thing to do today in the present. Alcohol plays a vital part of Japanese social, professional, and daily life. To Japanese, alcohol, sake, is a priceless gift from god. Therefore, historically, and traditionally, there are many festivals and ceremonies built upon making sake. For example, you might see lots of huge sake buckets in Shinto shrines, which is called OMIKI in Japanese. And for many life-related events, or even to celebrate, pray, exorcise evil spirits, and worship gods, ceremonies always involve alcohol. People either drink the sake, or pour it on their bodies or on the ground. This is similar to many other culture around the world as well.

Sake is for god, but a beer after a hard-working day is a small ceremony that almost any adult can do to honour and reward themselves.

In the last episode, at the ending part, Miyuki looks at her beer glass and thinks, “what makes an amazing dinner?” Then the camera goes one by one to other characters in the story: Miyuki’s supervisor having a meal with his family; her coworker, a young woman, drinking with her boyfriend together in a izakaya; and another coworker, a young man, enjoying food and drinks special and unique for himself at home; and lastly, the night get dark, the manager of the local grocery store pouring a beer into a glass after work, opening up a box of cold chicken karaage, and telling himself tomorrow he will work hard and do his best. This is where my tears came.

Ending

Life is not easy for any of us. Working and living take a lot of valuable time and energy out from us. I would do anything to take care of myself, and to make myself happy in my private time, because most of the time, I cannot afford another bad day. Saying no to extra work, saying yes to preserve a me-time, Miyuki shows her answer of self-love. So, I choose food, books, music, learning, drinks, and watching a dorama like The Style of Evening Drinks to learn more about how to make a comfortable living for myself.

Reference

TV Show: The Style of Evening Drinks (晩酌の流儀)

Broadcaster: TV Tokyo Script Writer: Yousuke Masaike 政池洋佑 Director: Takashi Ninomiya, 二宮崇/Taku Matsumoto, 松本拓 Broadcast Period/Airtime: July 2 - August 20, 2022/Saturday 0:52-1:23

Castings: 栗山千明 Chiaki Kuriyama, 武田航平 Kohei Takeda, 辻凪子 Nagiko Tsuji, おかやまはじめ Hajime Okayama

Theme music: 「yugi」by yonawo (listen it on Spotify) Reference Links: Japanese Official Website - https://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/banshaku/

Amazon Prime - https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B09VZ5DD1C