Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2010

“Man, it stinks in here.” “That’s just the drains.” The door gets opened, briefly: it’s cold outside, and the rain hasn’t let up for hours.

“Do they have places like this in England?” one of the customers asks me, shortly before I catch him trying to pilfer something from my bag. “Yes,” I reply. “Just bigger.”

The entire floor area of Sankei Saketen is probably about four tatami—five, if you include the toilet. No frills here; not unless you count the portraits of Miki Ando lining the walls. If you want food, there’s a shelf behind the counter stacked with tinned fish, corned beef and asparagus, and a selection of bar snacks in plastic tubs. More complex dishes are whipped out of a fridge and microwaved.

In the austere future that many wags are predicting for Japan, there might be a lot more bars like this. Sankei Saketen has asked itself what people want most from a neighborhood watering hole, and concluded that it’s to talk, to get drunk, and to do it as cheaply as possible. A swing door leads into the adjacent liquor store, and the barkeep flits constantly between the two. Shochu starts at ¥150, while you can get some pretty decent nihonshu for ¥310. When I start off with a ¥410 bottle of beer, it feels like some kind of rich-kid faux pas.

Surveying the list of cocktails, I spot an unfamiliar name. “What’s a toto sour?” “Revolting.” It turns out to be made with mamushi sake—liquor with added pit viper—and has a medicinal tang that’s far from unpleasant. A few more of these, and even west Ikebukuro starts to look good.