LP "listening bars" trending... but why not digital?

[bluesman]

You have to understand the Japanese and Asian culture in general to understand this and the many similar activities that pervade their lives but are absent from the cultures of much of western civilization.  This isn't about sound quality or hardware or any other specific element of the experience - it's about the experience itself.  It's about sensory input, awareness, and serenity.  It's about how it makes you feel as you immerse yourself in it.

 

If there is an English word to describe it, that word would probably be "cool" in the best sense.  You can't buy cool and you can't put it on - you can only be cool.  And part of Asian cool is experiencing things as deeply and with as much involvement and interest as possible.  This is sadly alien to many in the western hemisphere.

 

When our son worked in Tokyo, we got to spend more than a few evenings in such places, many of which (including restaurants) offer or feature only one thing.  The focus may have been jazz, or Scotch, or wine, a specific kind of food, a topic of conversation etc.  The focus itself is the attraction, and the Japanese love to experience everything they can from even the simplest object or act.  There are many tiny local places that only serve yakitori or shabu shabu or nabe or sukiyaki.  And there are many more ways to experience and share each than we (or at least I and most westerners with whom I've discussed this) have the patience and attention span to find and enjoy.

 

As the saying goes, you shouldn't turn other peoples' culture into your costume.  We tend to appropriate what catches our eyes or imaginations from other cultures with imperfect understanding of what it means to them and why.  We buy a miniature topiary and put it on display, while Asians revere bonsai as magical and spiritual.  We buy or make a zen garden or koi pool as decoration, while Asians derive spiritual energy from them and can sit adjacent to them for hours enjoying simply being there.  So we try to understand the allure of hardware or program material in a vinyl bar when the true attraction is the experience itself and all it means to those who fully embrace it.

 

A few such places may prosper in isolation in the US, but embracing this way of life seems not to be in our DNA.

[bluesman]

3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Well put, except that every culture diffuses into someone else's (witness your listing of scotch & wine above).

 

Also, many non-Asians on the West coast at least experience aspects of various Asian cultures in the same way as some Asians do.  I'll also reject the DNA allusion...

 

Sure , many non-Asian people can and do enjoy and understand much about Asian culture.  But many if not most of us tend to approach life in a different way.  More than one cab driver in Japan thanked us for gracing his cab.  One refused to accept payment for a ride because he had to drive around the block a few times to find the place we were going.  We watched a young girl chase a patron down the street to return a tip he'd left on her table - we heard her tell him that perfect service is expected, and that she was pleased she could provide it for him.  The staff at many stores (e.g. Mitsukoshi, a wonderful department store) greets each customer entering the store and offers to provide whatever assistance might be needed.  I don't see that approach to life very much here in the states.

 

As for distillation, it began in Asia - they were distilling and drinking fermented rice and mare's milk as far back as 800 BCE.  It spread to Greece by the next century and it was actually an Arabic alchemist who invented the pot still in about the 8th century.  The modern Japanese whiskey industry as we know it today dates to about 1930 and the establishment of what became Suntory.  But sake dates back about 2500 years in Japan, so they're way ahead of us in the wine world.

[bluesman]

4 minutes ago, ednaz said:

Brutal failures, in fact, where customers didn't just shun the kiosks, but voiced very strong and nasty opinions.

 

And this, to me, is the critical difference between American culture and Asian. We assume the worst about everyone.  Anger is our default response to anything we perceive as a challenge to our opinions and the sense of superiority they confer on us.  There is little or no presumption of honor or integrity on the part of or toward the other party in any dispute, whether real or falsely perceived.  If a driver accidentally discovers that he or she is in the wrong lane and wants to move to the correct one before reaching a barrier or other prohibition against lane changing, the typical American response is to assume that the driver is a fool and/or maliciously trying to cut off the responder.  The latter takes offense immediately and makes every possible effort to prevent the desired lane change.  

 

My wife and I have been amazed at the level of courtesy and consideration most Asians show each other and visitors to their region. We've experienced this consistently in Japan, Hong Kong, and Vietnam.  There's simply little or none of this mindless reactive anger to things that don't go as hoped and planned.  Instead, the default presumption is that anyone can make a mistake and that it was not personal or directed at the other party.  As a result, mutual efforts are made to accommodate each other in daily life.  We could all benefit from a healthy dose of such tranquility and thoughtful accommodation of interpersonal differences.

 

I suspect that those who enjoy vinyl bars in Japan don't criticize the equipment, the playlists, or anything else about the place.  They accept and embrace everything for what it is and try to make each experience the best they can.  They may well find things they dislike there, but they'll be as positive as they can and politely suggest how they think things could be even better than they are now.  They go out of their way to save face for others and, in doing so, preserve and enhance their own dignity.

[bluesman]

6 minutes ago, ednaz said:

History is a little bit off. First mentions of beer brewing in the Middle East in writing were in Persia, around 7000 BCE, and you'll find it in the written records in Persia, Sumeria, Egypt. Since the first written mentions are 7000 BCE, they'd clearly been at it for longer than that. Egyptians were brewing beer and fermenting wine at industrial scale during the pre-dynastic period, 3100 BCE.  Bakers were also beer makers. They took loaves of bread, soaked them and immersed them in big jars to ferment.  (The royals and rich folks drank wine... beer was for the workers.) The wheat they used is now called emmer, and they also used rye. Later on (around 2000 BCE) they also brewed using grains instead of using bread. You'll find beer containers in the pyramid rooms where workers were interred.  Egyptians were distilling alcohol to drink second century BCE, which is where the Greeks learned it.

 

I appreciate your knowledge and experience - your beer history is, of course, correct.  But beer is not a distillate, and I made no mention of or reference to beer.  I was responding to a comment about whiskey and wine - and my history on that is quite correct.

 

Although whiskey is technically made from "beer", that's only because the mash is fermented.  There's a growing trend in the US toward distilling ready-to-drink beer into spirits.  If you're of a mind to do so, find yourself a bottle of Pine Barrens or Ranger Creek's La Bestia Defavorable for an imteresting experience.  I love the stuff!

[bluesman]

25 minutes ago, ednaz said:

Perhaps read the whole thing. Distilling spirits to drink was happening in Egypt second century BCE. An offshoot of the alchemistry focused distillation that had gone on for many centuries before.

 

Yes, indeed - and as I said in the first post, "...in Asia, they were distilling and drinking fermented rice and mare's milk as far back as 800 BCE", which was about 600 years before the second century BCE.

 

Whether the first booze was crafted in Asia or ancient Egypt is impossible to establish with certainty. But it was obviously at about the same time, and some authorities favor each as the "first".  It doesn't matter for our purposes.  I brought it up only because the suggestion was made by Ralf11 that the consumption of wine and Scotch in Japan represents "diffusion of our culture". My point was a correction of that erroneous assumption, since they were distilling alcohol in Asia for drinking 800 years before Christ. 

 

Distillation in Egypt prior to the 8th century BCE is documented as having been largely for purification of essential oils and components of fragrance.  They didn't drink it.  Maybe an Egyptian or two chugged a few shots a year before the first Asian got plastered. If so, I apologize.