Tokyo's Buddhist Bar

Well, hey there! Welcome back to me, eh! How the heck are you? Me? Thanks for asking. Stiff as a board from moving, shifting, walking up and down countless stairs, etc. However, we are ensconced in our new abode and well into rearranging everything... fixing... painting... ripping out... re-electrifying the place, et al. 

Nong started back at Tims today and we won`t get TV and Internet service till Thursday so I still have to go out to Tims to check my email and send out these blogposts. Luckily there`s a Tims at either end of the block. Hey...how`d that happen? Fill your mug and grab a VT while I tell you about a special bar in Japan.

Who says booze and religion don’t mix? That’s certainly not the case at Vowz, a unique Tokyo bar run by two Buddhist monks who serve customers delicious cocktails, religious chants and sermons.

There are over 10,000 bars in Tokyo, but none like the Vowz, in the city’s Yotsuya neighborhood. Opened by Japanese Buddhist monk Yoshinobu Fujioka, this offbeat watering hole has been bringing members of his congregation together for 13 years. ”They become totally different believers here, the distance between them and myself diminishing,”the shaved-head bartender says. “They are more connected with each other.” 

In the old days, people would go to Buddhist temples to socialize and have a drink, but times have changed, and Fujioka decided to adapt in order to remain close to the people. So he opened the Vowz Bar, a place where people could come in and listen to Buddhist sermons and homilies without feeling constrained in any way. 

”At the temple, folks are always well-behaved and attentive, no matter how long or boring the sermon is,” head monk Gugan Taguchi says. “Here at the bar, they don’t like my sermons — they walk out.” But thanks to the friendly atmosphere and the tasty cocktails prepared by the monks themselves, that hardly ever happens.

Talk about a great place to `get religion`, eh!

See ya, eh!

Bob