The Economist writes that “drunken salarymen tottering home after a night’s karaoke are as much a feature of modern Japan as sushi bars and bullet trains.“
Japanese culture dictates that these so-called “salarymen” should not offend their superiors by turning down a drink. As you can imagine, this makes for a lot of passing out on various hard surfaces post-bar. The Daily Mail notes,
[pullquote]”For some [salarymen], their inability to say no to their superiors leads them into heavy intoxication and public drunkenness.”[/pullquote]
There are sites—like the I Love ‘Salarymen’ in TOKYO Facebook page—dedicated to pictures of Japanese salarymen on their way home from nomikai social functions. These functions are designed to bring colleagues closer together, but it appears that sometimes it just brings the salarymen closer to passing out on whatever surface is available.
Take a look below at PTFO-ed salarymen, a sight that has become very common in Japan.
That being said, Japan doesn’t even make Quartz‘s chart of the biggest hard alcohol drinkers on the globe. Now, if this was a sake, beer, an shochu chart, we think it’d be a different story.
All photos courtesy of I Love “Salarymen” in TOKYO, izismile.com.
[via The Telegraph]