Then there is whisky, generally the local distillations that are mostly drunk with water; and the stock salaryman hole in the wall, with each customer's bottle-keep, deals in nothing but. It is however, as elsewhere, a man's drink - an older man's.
Women are more likely to go for wine, clear spirits (shochu or chuhai), or to stick with the beer. Tastes are liberalizing, however. Wine has lost it pretentiously 'foreign' image and imported bottles of decent quality can now be found almost anywhere. Cocktail bars are no longer rare outside hotels.
The drink most popularly associated with Japan: sake, is very much there in the advertising and on sale, but it is but a pale stream in the shadow of the beer and whisky. Drunk usually cold in summer and hot in winter, 'rice wine' slides down the throat with ease and should be handled with care. It is, perhaps predictably, largely the domain of the older set: the late middle-aged to the retired.
For binge-drinkers, the emphasis is on ikkinomi - 'down-in-one' - a game played by the young to commemorate occasions such as joining university, starting a new job or at blind-date parties. Despite a high consumption of alcohol - around 100 liters a year each, comfortably putting the Ultras Nippon mid-table in a Premier League of 10 nations - many Japanese are unable to drink too much (many lack the necessary enzyme to break down alcohol and turn a frightening shade of crimson) and while the lucky simply fall asleep, ikkinomi has had some famous, fatal consequences with participants, at the encouragement of their friends, literally drinking themselves to death.
Empty bottles after a binge.
Young people are more likely to get raucous and sick than actually croak though, and any drunken violence - still relatively rare - will probably be theirs. The main danger you may face are the ubiquitous 'street pizzas', served up warm and fresh by sloshed salarymen, as you make your way
Read more: http://www.japanvisitor.com/japanese-culture/drinking-in-Japan#ixzz3sCi6Io2t