For better or worse, a large percentage of Japanese people spend more time in bars and “izakaya” (Japanese style pubs) than with their own families. That means that going to one of these places will arguably give you more chances to learn Japanese than if you actually had a host family (in some cases not kidding at all!). As long as you don’t kill more brain cells than you build, bars, izakayas, and other drinking establishments can greatly improve your Japanese through reading, speaking, and listening practice. If you wanna talk the talk, better learn to walk the walk in Japan with the following 10 tips:
1. Talk to Japanese People
Now is your chance! Do it now! Speak to strangers in Japanese without getting one word answers in return! As some of us have experienced, it can be very hard to have a real conversation with Japanese strangers in public because of their inhibitions about talking to foreigners, and especially the chance that they might have to use English. Thanks to the power of alcohol and the loss of power of societal expectations, if you talk to a Japanese person in a drinking establishment you will likely get a longer answer. Occasionally, they will even come talk to you! Granted, not all of these encounters will be fun:
「外人（がいじん）だ！ここから出（で）て行（い）けこのやろ！」”It’s a foreigner! Get out of here jerk!”
or:
「すげーこの外人（がいじん）のお尻（しり）がマジででけー！」”Wow, this foreigner’s butt is huuuge!”
No one really wants to hear these kind of comments, but hey, practice is practice right? Good time to work on a clever comeback. For the most part, however, I hope your conversations are better than that. For example, since people at the bar have lowered inhibitions you might even get to move your conversational topics beyond the differences in seasonal weather between where ever you are from and Japan.
2. Order things
Okay okay, for this one to work you need to get beyond ビール一本（いっぽん）ください “One beer please.” The food and beverage options at a lot of places are pretty extensive and vary greatly from place to place, so pick something on the menu you don’t recognize and ask someone what it is! If you are lucky, it will be something exclusively Japanese and it will take quite a bit of talking with the waiter (or other willing Japanese person near by) to figure out exactly what it is you are ordering. This type of “real world” practice is invaluable and will go a long way to building language fluency and understanding of the Japanese culture. The other option is of course just to point at something and hope you don’t get something either nasty or expensive and just build vocabulary that way.
3. Learn Drinking Songs
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZho0UbKTZ0&NR=1[/youtube]
Like drinking songs in English, a lot of Japanese 飲（の）み会（かい）コール “drinking party chants” are really bad! If you can keep up with the slang and swear like a sailor, you’ll be further along the path to fluency than most though.
4. Go to Karaoke
In Japan, all roads do not lead to Rome, they lead to Karaoke.
At some point during your evening (or afternoon, whatever) there is a highly strong chance you will end up at karaoke if you have already been visiting a drinking establishment in Japan. DO NOT WASTE THIS CHANCE! Join up with some of your newly found, slightly “friendlier,” Japanese friends and learn a few tunes in Japanese. Yes, this in fact means that you have to get beyond just the chorus in “Linda, Linda” but with perseverance and maybe a little YouTube before you go out, you can literally blow the socks off of everyone in the room. Guaranteed, no one expects a foreigner to pull of the songs “Yamato” or “Sen No Kaze” flawlessly in Japanese, and you will have friends for life (or at least the evening) if you do.
5. Try to ナンパ
Attempting to get lucky with a guy or girl you do not know in Japan is called “nampa.” To have decent game though, it helps to understand the language, and with luck on your side one will improve with the other! Learning silly pickup lines probably wont help, but getting to the point where you can have a clever conversation with someone you are interested in might. Or just be イケメン or 美人（びじん） “hot” and no one will care if your Japanese is awful. For the purpose of language improvement however, using your Japanese with someone you are interested in adds extra incentive to practice! Get out there and don’t be shy!
6. Pay your bill
When the bill comes, there are sometimes complications for which you may need to use your Japanese. Your group needs to decide who will pay, and depending on the type of establishment you are visiting you may have additional “service charges” (see Japan’s Fantasy Girls for additional clarification). For the first step, it is often pretty easy to determine who will pay, either the highest ranking person in the group in the case of a company/school outing, or わりかん meaning splitting the bill into equal parts, in the case of a casual outing with your friends. Paying for exactly what your ordered, called 別々（べつべつ）, happens a lot less often unless it is with a group of foreigners.
In the case of being treated to a night of drinking and eating by your boss (or professor etc.) you of course need to practice being grateful and saying thank you:
ごちそうさまでした。Thank you for treating me.
すみませんありがとうございます。Excuse me, thank you very much.
In the case of splitting the bill with your friends, to figure out what you need to pay you can use:
僕（ぼく）の分（ぶん）いくら払（はら）えばいいですか？How much should I pay for my part?
Or with really close friends you can just ask
いくら？How much?
It depends on who you are with and what situation you are in, but there are varying degrees of formality when paying, so be sure to look into what you should say before going out to avoid being rude!
7. Make Friends with the Staff
This step is a lot easier to do at some places than others. Smaller establishments are typically better because they are a little quieter, and the “master” of the shop or other staff have more time to spend with individual customers as compared to bigger bars, chain izakayas, or other places like that. Initial conversations might be about the master’s drink special of the night, his/her おすすめ “recommendations” but if you are a good customer and hit it off with the master and staff then you will have great conversation partners as well as occasionally get awesome deals for being a regular. The staff might also be a bridge between you and other Japanese customers if you have a good enough relationship. Of course it all depends on the particular establishment you go to, but listening to the “master’s” stories can be priceless as well as good for your language! If you are lucky you’ll get a drink named after you!
8. Find a place to sleep
Missing the last train may mean you need to act like a Japanese salary man and find a cheap or free place to crash.
Since staying out late in Japan is a very common practice, and sleeping at a co-workers place is not, so there are a number of business that cater to those who miss the last train, the most famous being capsule hotels as pictured above. What you see is what you get, but you can at least get a few hours of sleep out of the cold and maybe a shower. A lot of capsule hotels cater only to men, so women might need to find other options if out past the last train.
To improve your Japanese in the process of finding late night lodging, you can use and build on the following phrases:
When you want to stay with a friend:
今日（きょう）泊（と）めてくれる？ “Will you let me stay at your place tonight?”
ありがとう！ここからどのぐらい？ “Thanks! About how far away is it (your place) from here?”
At a hotel:
空き部屋（あきべや）はありますか？ “Do you have any rooms available?”
一泊（いっぱく）はいくらですか？ “How much is it to stay for the night?”
ここは女（おんな）の人（ひと）が泊まれますか？ “Is it possible for women to stay here?”
チェックアウトは何時（なんじ）ですか？ “What time is checkout?”
Depending on your situation, the procedures might be different, so you can get a lot of practice with Japanese just by checking in and out of various hotels.
9. Learn etiquette of eating and drinking
Japanese culture is filled with complexity and subtlety. Please do not take this video seriously, it is supposed to be a joke!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCpbBVthD7o[/youtube]
Actually learning how to eat and drink properly will really impress people and make it easier to strike a conversation. Often, Japanese people are impressed just with a 外人（がいじん）”foreigner” being able to use chopsticks, but if you are actually able to pour sake the right way to the right people, pass food the right way, and show modesty people will be amazed and want to talk to you about how you learned your manners. After they tell you how good you are, be sure to ask for more tips so you keep on learning the etiquette, practicing the language, and showing people your genuine interest in their culture!
10. Be a connoisseur
Japan has arguably some of the best food and drink in the world, so ask and learn about what you are eating and drinking!
While in Japan, visitors can develop a taste for new and different types of food and drink whether it is sake, sushi, shochu, tako yaki, and the list goes on and on. If you find your “calling” be it $400 platters of sashimi or $5 pints of Asahi Super Dry with gyoza, learn about what you’re eating and talk about it to other people. Japanese people can have really strong opinions about what they eat, like preferences for Hiroshima style or Osaka style okonomiyaki, so you might find yourself in some heated arguments, but learning about the ingredients, the best places to eat or drink whatever it is you like, and the varieties in styles can provide ammunition for your argument and be a good learning tool for Japanese language and culture.
Disclaimer
While pubs, bars, izakaya, sushi restaurants, snack bars, etc are great places to make friends and learn Japanese it goes without saying to “don’t do anything stupid.” Going there doesn’t mean you have to make all foreigners look bad by doing things like getting embarrassingly drunk, shamelessly hitting on Japanese people, or just being inappropriate in general. Do your best to learn the language from the people who use it every day while not acting like a jerk.
This post was written by Nick W., who has traveled throughout many regions of Japan in search of unique cultural gems. He is currently earning his MBA and has researched topics like folk music in WWII Japan and Ainu cultural revival through music. His favorite Japanese musician is the late Nujabes.