Complete Coma!

I just remembered a pretty great anecdote that I best share with all my readers. I have not yet really dissected the drinking culture here in Japan , but rest assured that this is a topic that is lingering in my mind and will be dealt with when and if a stroke of inspiration hits me. In any case, I think it is fair to say that Japan has a pretty strong culture of drinking in social settings, mostly among the men. It can be a bit rough to handle if you are in a junior position and do not want to get drunk, but mostly nowadays sticking to oolong tea is respected and the worst you get is a few pointy comments about being a bore.

Now to my actual anecdote, with the above as a background I should mention that my impression of Korea and their drinking culture is that they drink at least twice as hard as the Japanese and that they don’t take a “no thank you” for an answer, probably something like Japan 20 years ago or so. However, my experience is limited so if anyone knows better please feel free to say so.

In any case, the anecdote concerns how, quite a few years and in another company, a member of the Swedish head office of that company was calling up the Korean country manager to check some things. He called on a Monday and knew that the day before, the company had organized an annual “family picnic” with the employees and their families. His image, with himself a family man of mild demeanour, was a family friendly event in a park, ending early with a lot of the focus on the children. From what I have been told, the conversation went something like this:

HQ Manager: Hi Mr. Park, how was the family picnic yesterday, did everyone have a good time?
Mr. Park: (Audibly hungover) Yes… it was COMPLETE coma, everyone was so wasted!
HQ Manager: (at loss for words, his image of a family friendly event in a park crumbling and being replaced by the image of a bunch of stupid drunk Koreans vomiting) Oh…
Mr. Park: (very satisfied) Yeah, it was great!