Big nights out are a daily option in Tokyo. As are benders of truly epic proportions. The only problem, however, is that there’s almost always a price to pay, and sometimes a hefty one.
Spectacularly drunk on Tokyo’s streets
Photographs from a small group of islands
AL says
Brilliant!!
Crazy drunk!!!
Lee says
Yeah, it was clearly quite a night…
Martin says
Great shot. Looks like he figured it would be a good idea to get some food in his belly but waited too long.
Lee says
Cheers.
Yes, as drunk as he was he’d at least realised that food was essential. Unfortunately it appears that he may have only managed an umeboshi off the top of the rice before keeling over…
john says
Buy the man a pillow!
Lee says
He seemed to be doing perfectly well without one!
Hans ter Horst says
The Tokyo police better start putting up some flyers on how to turn those guys on their stomachs to avoid them choking on their own puke. They’re really great on making flyers for all kinds of things, the Tokyo Police, in the last one I saw the pickpocket had curly hair and a big nose just like me 🙂
Lee says
Yes, there’s often a foreignness to the criminals in those photos. Admittedly not as bad as it used to be, but still happens.
He was definitely in a bad way, and what’s more, a minute earlier I’d passed the police helping another young man into an ambulance. His problem may not have been booze related though — was a bit hard to tell.
All that and it was only lunch time on a Friday…
Alex says
The Hokkaido Bank in the little town where I lived had a banner warning about wire transfer scams and the crook had blonde hair. That was photo worthy.
Lee says
I haven’t seen one that blatant for a while, although they do often seem to have suspiciously ‘tall’ noses…
Alex says
Dude, your bento’s getting cold!
Lee says
I suspect it was very cold by the time he came round!
Charlie Hayward says
I think I know what happened. He put his food on top of his chopsticks, thought they were lost, and before he could realize his mistake passed out. I bet he felt great when he woke up!
Lee says
Can only imagine how rotten he felt. Waking up in one’s own bed with a nasty hangover is bad enough, but on the street, potentially a long way from home? Must have been awful…
Squidpuppy says
It occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons we don’t see so much of this in big US cities, like LA or NYC, is because the US doesn’t have the same degree of public transportation. Young people and others, aside from the homeless, who get blasted out of their skulls in the US don’t have much opportunity for dropping dead drunk in the streets, because they’re usually driven somewhere, or don’t leave wherever they are, knowing they’d have to drive.
If the Japanese police or government is really interested in stopping this, I bet the issuing of citations, like parking tickets, would go a long way toward that. Hitting people in the pocket book is pretty effective. But then I expect the police and government go: meh. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s an uptick in this during the Olympics, and if Tokyo city government considers doing something about it beforehand.
Like public spitting, urination, and cutting in line in China before their Olympics, will Tokyo look at public practices that reflect poorly, and try to do something about it?
Lee says
That’s an interesting point. Never thought about it like that. Probably a lot more risky passing out in the streets in those cities too.
There’s a already talk of ‘cleaning up’ Kabukicho where this photo was taken, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see other changes brought in before 2020. The Olympics could end up changing a lot of things. Not necessarily for the better either…
Gahzirra says
You can get away with these things in Japan. Doing this in the US would not be safe in NYC or LA, you would be mugged. Japan doesn’t have the problems of the US, the vast majority are courteous and take care of where they live and conform to social norms. They will probably put something out but in comparison to the rest of the world Japan is already way a head in social etiquette.
Gahzirra says
Also I would prefer a drunk simply passing out on the street than the alternative in the US where they hop in a car and drive drunk possibly killing someone. Living in SoCal I can say every weekend I see a couple instances of cars swerving all over the road. On a few occasions I watched as a car drove down the road side swiping all the parked cars.
Lee says
Yeah, it’s certainly safer, and the chances of someone like that getting mugged are very slim.
Not convinced about the courteousness though. Customers often treat shop staff badly, with barely a glance let alone any please or thank yous. And likewise out on the street, there’s often a lack of common courtesy.
But happy to say there’s a similar lack of drunk driving. Certainly in the cities anyway.
winnie says
He might be too stress or sad.
He will have Hangover when he wake up!
Lee says
He will have. Possibly the mother of all hangovers too!