Despite thousands of years of searching there is still only one sure fire way to avert a hangover—don’t drink alcohol. However, if you find yourself in Japan, you’ll discover this is difficult to avoid.
The consumption of alcohol touches even the most sacred of ceremonies. Virtually all celebrations and festivals include the imbibing or offering of alcohol of some sort.
It’s also a key part of building bonds with workmates and business contacts so a policy of mitigation may be more sensible than complete avoidance.
Luckily, there are ways to avoid the dreaded hangover and salvage some semblance of productivity the following day. These can be divided into ’Preparation,’ ’During’ and ’Damage Control.’
Preparation
If you can see an evening of nomihodai (all you can drink) ahead of you followed by straight whiskies until well after your last train home, then you might want to start with a base of ukon. Ukon is a kind of turmeric and can be found mixed into a sugary drink called ’Ukon no Chikara’ in most convenience stores. The sugar is to hide the taste, which is actually quite awful.
No, this isn’t beer… It’s the Japanese cure for hangover!
I can’t really recommend these drinks though because they have such a minuscule amount of Ukon as to make them only effective as a placebo, and now that you know they don’t work, the placebo effect also goes out the window.
Better are the sachets of pure ukon that can be purchased from pharmacies. Make sure you have something to wash it down with though as I can only describe the taste as ’garden-mulch-like.’ It tastes so bad it has to be more effective than the convenience store drinks.
During
Luckily, the Japanese style of drinking is relatively responsible compared to some other places. Drinks are almost always consumed with food in ’izakaya’ so the more you drink, the more you eat which naturally soaks up a lot of the alcohol. Another tip is to drink only shōchū. Shōchū is a distilled drink that can be made from a variety of different ingredients. I have friends who swear that a night out on only shōchū produces no nasty hangover the next day.
The key word here is ’only’—if you have one beer and the rest is shōchū then your protection is gone! From experience, I can also strongly recommend against nihonshu (commonly referred to as sake in the west) and chūhai (the preferred drink of 15-year-olds and the homeless) if you are hoping to avoid a hangover.
Damage Control
There is a massive market in Japan for damage control treatments for the day after. You can choose them based on your symptoms: some are for nausea while, others are for tiredness, virtually all of them are semi toxic!
Don’t be surprised to find nicotine in the list of ingredients and enough natural stimulants to get your heart racing. The most effective cure in my humble opinion, however, is a Japanese cure-all—the miso soup. I’m sure part of this is related to the high salt content, but it works a treat.
If you’re outside Japan some of these things may be difficult to get hold of, but if you end up in Japan and are wondering how the locals survive, well now you know.
