What's so incredible? Why is she so awesome? How does she do it?

I have said it before and I will say it again. The Japanese like their drink. Whether it’s smooth, cultured sake (nigori is notoriously difficult to find), a solid round of mango-flavoured Yebisu, or just enough shochu to keep the enamel on your teeth, Japan offers up a variety of hard and soft liquors, and everything in between.

Never a big drinker at home, what kind of cultural immersion would I be feigning if I didn’t at least try some of the local brew? Since I’ve been in Tokyo my few short weeks, I’ve tasted the sake the prince drinks at the royal household, visited the gold-plated building that is Asahi national headquarters, and spent an evening making slurred attempts at small talk with the locals in the closet-sized bars of the Golden Gai. I have given up a few nights of sleep in favour of a pub crawl or a karaoke marathon, and I have let a few of my taste buds go numb in the noble effort to experience Japan’s frontline first-hand.

It all started with the official (ironically government-run) Nihonshu Fair 2008, where the Japan Times sent a few of us over to Ikebukuro’s Sunshine City to document the world’s biggest sake tasting. So, camcorder in hand, I set out to videotape the event. Of course once the taping was done, I had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest brow sake journalists in the country, learning loads about the industry, the specialties of each prefecture, and the etiquette of downing sake. I emerged from the experience a good deal more knowledgeable despite leaving several brain cells lighter. Below you can see the video I put together of the event for The Japan Times Online.

What I really took away from the Nihonshu Fair was not an understanding of sake artistry or a history lesson of industry competition or a lecture on the technicalities of federal export laws, but the realisation that the generally reserved Japanese find it difficult to stay that way the moment the tap turns on. Japan takes fourth place on the global list of widespread drinkers; 92 percent of the population has had a drink in their life, a statistic that is reiterated in my nightly observations.

Everyone drinks here. I mean everyone: middle-aged men in sharp business suits, young single women in stilettos, teenagers still in their school uniforms, college kids, intellectuals, foreign travellers, housewives out with their neighbours. On weekends it is hard to walk three blocks without seeing someone in last night’s outfit crouched in a corner or by a sewer with a plastic bag, perhaps flanked by a few concerned comrades, but otherwise beyond sleeping it off. On evenings it is difficult to secure space in a crowded restaurant where you cannot audibly hear the drunken laughter emitted by the 26-person table of Japanese coworkers two rooms down. The drinking culture is so omnipresent and so accessible, they sell beer in vending machines. And when a coke-a-cola costs more than a Kirin stout, it’s no mystery why so many turn to the pints until the last round is called.

The drinking culture is so omnipresent and so accessible, they sell beer in vending machines.

Tokyo especially is a shockingly 24hour culture. It is easy to spend only three nights a week actually sleeping, since so much is open after hours. But when you step back and look at the demographics of what stays open through the wee hours of the morning, the picture starts to get a little less fuzzy. At any give 3 am morning on any given street, at least 15 percent of the establishments in the area are open, but they are limited to convenience stores, grocers, restaurants, and, of course, bars. Sentos and onsen (bathhouses) are open late for those wishing to soak or sweat out the excess alcohol, and capsule hotels offer all-night check-in for those unwilling to sleep on park benches until the first train arrives in the morning.

There’s a magic to it, that’s for sure. It’s a unique experience to watch the sun rise at 4:30 in the morning over a far from deserted Shinjuku or Shibuya. And it’s part of the Japanese experience to find yourself on the darker side of rice, potato, or even plum wine. It’s just a part of the culture so upfront it doesn’t take much searching to find even off the beaten path dives.

In any such dive, local or tourist, you can get a Japanese bar-mate to say more about the death penalty or child abduction or global warming than you can anywhere else in the city. Japan likes to present a unified front on a macro and micro scale (both in foreign policy and in day-to-day encounters) that does not take kindly to open discussion of social issues anywhere that isn’t on an anonymous blog. But the bar is a sacred place where politics of any variety can be discussed with little to no retribution needed the morning after. In fact, anything said over a tankard is exempt from the following: being believed, repeated, remembered, or revisited on any occasion for any reason. So drink up, my friends, and find safety in the knowledge that your otherwise uncouth cultural faux pas will not only never be recounted, but will undoubtedly be the most entertaining event of the evening.

If it started with the Nihonshu Fair, it ends in Asakusa, next to Sumida-gawa, above the Flame d’Ore, overlooking the expanse of the city and its many drinking habits as a whole. I’m still standing at the top of my Tokyo game, drinking it all in, and toasting to a city worth visiting.

All you need to know - 8 simple rules for drinking in Japan: