From my seat on the second floor of Shochu Zanmai, a bar specializing in Japan's indigenous distilled liquor, I can see directly into the building across the street. The bar is located down a narrow alley a 10-minute walk from Tokyo's Ikebukuro Station, and the close proximity of the surrounding buildings gives me a clear view of the neighbors. Through the window, I make out a group of Japanese men sitting around a low table next door, their arms raised in a toast. This scene of quotidian conviviality mirrors the atmosphere inside Shochu Zanmai, and I imagine that — like us — the men are drinking shōchū.
This thought occurs to me partly because of the Showa Era (1926-89) ambience of the neighborhood — along with the bar's interior, with its tatami-mat floors and precariously steep staircase — which recalls the days of the first shōchū boom, in the '80s, when legions of salarymen favored the clear liquor for long-haul drinking sessions. Shōchū has also been the focus of all of my attention for the past 30 minutes.
At Shochu Zanmai, we are literally surrounded by the stuff: the bar boasts over 300 varieties of the spirit, and plastic crates filled with bottles are stacked high along three of the four walls in the room where we are seated. Faced with so many choices, I would be lost on my own, but shōchū expert Christopher Pellegrini, who has kindly agreed to play the Virgil to my Dante, leads me through a tasting that reveals the drink's astonishing diversity.