#show us komamura going to the bar and ordering water in a large bowl you cowards!!

[recurring-polynya]

Izakaya Kamenoya, part 3

It's been so long, and I kept getting busy with stuff, but rest assured, I have not stopped thinking about every shinigami's favorite watering hole, Izakaya Kamenoya, for even one second of that time, and today I am going to talk about what's really important: what kind of booze can you get there.

The multiplicity of drink options is honestly the thing I really love about Kamenoya. On a meta level, someone has to draw all this stuff, like, with their hands. I have no idea, actually, if the animators consider this sort of thing a break from all the powering up and sword fights and rolling across cave floors, or if they consider a Trip to the Bar to be really tedious. My point is, they very well could have just always drawn people drinking out of the same cups, except they didn't, they drew a series of loving close ups of sake-pouring and a variety of drinkware styles. On a more Watsonian level, I just like the idea that, like Alice's Restaurant, you can get anything you want at Izakaya Kamenoya. So let's get into it!

I think the thing that really made me notice this was this scene from the Amagai Arc, where you see Kira doing mokkiri, or overpouring his sake. (At least I think that's what he's doing. The articles I read sounded more like the server is supposed to do it, which emphasizes the establishment's generosity, so maybe Kira is just being a messy drunk. I'm pretty sure you're also not supposed to pour yourself sake, you're supposed to do it for your tablemates)

Often, mokkiri is done into a masu, which is a small square box that was used as a standard measure for rice. You can see Nanao drinking out of one here!

What kind of cup to drink your sake out of is a huge topic, but basically, it depends on the flavor and characteristics of the sake. The fact that Kira and the Lads are drinking out of clear glasses might imply that they're drinking chilled, summer-style sake (or possibly trying to appreciate the clarity of the vintage, as if this is what you call up Iba and Renji to go to the pub for).

I am not an expert, so I'm not going to attempt to identify exactly what these different cups would be classified as, but you can see a variety of shapes, sizes and materials.

I found less information on different shapes of tokkuri (that's the slightly bigger bottle that you serve from), but those come in a variety, as well. Mostly, they have either the large, oval-shaped jugs you can see in the first picture, or the more slender white ones in the second. I am really fond of these tall boys that Kira and Hisagi have, which seem to have straighter sides than the other kind, kind of like a milk bottle.

While we're looking at that picture, there's an ad on the wall for beer. Beer!

In modern times, beer is actually the most popular alcoholic beverage in Japan, which Wikipedia tells me came about after WWII because of restrictions on the use of rice. They've had beer since the Edo era, though, and many of today's major breweries got started in the late 1800s. I love the idea that beer is a thing you can get in Soul Society, but it's clear that it has not overcome sake in popularity the way it did in the World of the Living--which makes sense, because of they never had those restrictions. (In other words, throw this in the bucket of stuff like tattoos and attitudes toward homosexuality that I think diverged from the Living World because of weird quirks of history).

In fact, Kamenoya apparently imports beer from the World of Living (maybe it also has local brews as well).

Look how lovingly that bottle of Kirin is drawn. 😂 The fact that it's shown in a glass mug in the ad, but served in a Pilsner glass here supports the idea that there are multiple kinds of beer available. Now, I believe that Kirin Zero is non-alcoholic. It's surprisingly hard to do research on beer labels from 20 years ago. I couldn't find a label that looked exactly like that, and Kirin's non-alcoholic offering seems to be called Kirin Free now (Kirin Zero is now zero-carb and I couldn't figure out if it's alcoholic or not). In any case, I am choosing in my heart to believe that this is because of weird TV censorship and in no way implies that Rukia is not one of the champion drinkers of the Gotei-13.

Don't get me wrong! I love a bar that offers non-alcoholic options! You can also get tea at Kamenoya, which you can see Tobiume and Okyō drinking below; Momo has some as well (they also have a discussion about it)

earlier posts in this series: (part 1) (part 2)