"British" pubs and drinking with teachers

Since it's the end of the semester, our teacher for Japanese Thought II (a lesson about the occult in Japan) took us out to a bar in Ichigaya...
First of all, this in itself is quite strange! Though I've heard of some lecturers at Leeds joining the merriments of the fourth-years, I just can't wrap my head around it!
This isn't the first offer of drinking with a professor, just the first I've been to (and apparently another is in the offing at some point).


Once you get past the awkwardness of drinking with someone who on a normal day is your teacher and you have to shut up and listen to him... It was quite fun (^_^)
As I knew already, Ioannis Gaitanidis (a Greek don't you know) had completed his MA and PhD at Leeds (some of the readings for our lecture were photocopied from Leeds University library books, these always got a thumbs up!), so we got to talking about some of the lecturers and the classes I took... He can safely recommend lectures conducted by Dr. Ampiah and agrees that avoiding Irene Hayter's lectures is a good idea (Hayter's gonna hate). Had a jolly ol' giggle! ...With all the names here, my spell checker's having a fit!


So, the bar we went to was one of a popular chain in Japan: Hub, the "authentic British pub"
As a Brit (one who spent an awful lot of time in pubs last year) I can say that it holds up only reasonably well. When I first went to a Hub, I thought "my God, this is nothing like an English pub!" - so either I've been in Japan long enough for me to forget what English pubs actually are, or I was feeling particularly belligerent at the time... General side note, I'm in 大好きwith the word belligerent at the moment!

So here's a list of Hub's pluses and minuses towards being "authentically British" and you can decide whether or not you agree with me.

• TVs playing sports (rugby and football no less!)
• +1 (Hosei were playing rugby and were being obliterated before half-time: 29-7!!)
• Music thumping, sometimes loudly, through the pub
• -1 (the tunes in the pubs I frequent aren't usually offensively loud)
• Wooden tables and panelling
• +1 (very comfortingly British)
• Advertisements for Guinness
• +1 (and possibly another +1 for the price of a Guinness, too)
• The cheapest alcoholic product is a cocktail
• -1 (if it's not watered-down lager, it ain't British)
• The walls aren't adorned with random crap
• -1 (slightly picky, as it's hard to be individual in a chain restaurant)
• Food (A few pub standards: fish 'n' chips, bangers 'n' mash etc.)
• +1 (most pubs do food in some form)
• Food portions (not to mention eating it with chopsticks)
• -1 (probably not Japan's fault, but unforgivably small - if you come away from a pub meal hungry, you've done something wrong)
• Waiters/waitresses
• +1 for being dressed in Christmas outfits, but -1 for not having to go to the bar to order
• Ashtrays
• -1 (for that authentic British feel, make smokers stand outside in the cold!)
• Cabinet full of random bottles of alcohol
• Undecided about this one... I don't remember seeing anything similar back home
• No fruit machines/pub-quiz machine
• -1 (Got to get the drunk fools to waste their money somehow!)

So a few good pros and cons to go at there... I think on the whole that Hub makes a valiant effort, but that I'm just going to be hard to please in this area, because I miss drinking in England... Try going for a night out in Tokyo on £10: impossible.

Anywho, anybody in Japan that's been to a Hub, feel free to dispute/add to my list :)

Rant over

Next week: Christmas in Japan