Volume 22　お酒の楽しみ方


Drinking at the Pub

Ann Slater: Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of Cultural Crossroads. This is Ann . . . 

Michael Rhys: And this is Mike.

Ann: . . . and we are very glad to be with you for this very lovely month of May. And this month we are going to be talking about drinking.

Michael: Drinking! An activity which is at the heart of many an Englishman.

Ann: That's right, so I hear! Ha-ha . . .

Michael: Yes indeed, yes.

Ann: And, uh, one of the nice things to do when the weather gets beautiful, as it does in May, I imagine, is to, you know, go have a drink with friends at the pub. Is, is that how it is in England?

Michael: That's right, yes. The pub is, uh, a quintessential part of British culture and it has been for centuries. The two most important public buildings in traditional English life were the church and the pub.

Ann: It, kind of, covers the range of . . . ha-ha.

Michael: Pretty much.

Ann: Right. Uh-huh. And pub is short for what?

Michael: It's short for public house.

Ann: Meaning?

Michael: Meaning a house for the public to go to, to spend some time together to chat, to catch up, to unwind, to relax. Now, in the States do you have pubs?

Ann: No, not as such, meaning not called pubs.

Michael: Right.

Ann: Uh, of course there is the neighborhood bar.

Michael: I wonder how that, I wonder how that's different. For me, a pub is usually a little dark, little smoky, although actually now that's not the case because smoking is now banned in indoor public places. But certainly . . .

Ann: In all pubs?

Michael: In all pubs.

Ann: Really. That must really cramp people's style.

Michael: Well, that's one of the reasons, perhaps, for the decline in pubs in recent years. But certainly when I lived in England, pubs were always a little bit dark, a little bit smoky, very noisy - you've got the fruit machines going, people playing pool maybe, lots of conversation going on. Crowded and very friendly, friendly sort of places. It's a place where you could easily start up a conversation with a total stranger - something you'd never really do anywhere else. 

Ann: Is it equally popular with men and women?

Michael: Well, I would say certainly, you know, more recent years, yes, there's no problem with that, but traditionally pubs were the male domain.

Ann: Right, right.

Michael: Yeah, at one time. Certainly when I was, when I was very young that was the case, yeah.

Ann: I suppose the drinks must be different too, right?

Michael: I . . .

Ann: Talk-thinking about, I mean, what would be, for example, a typical thing? You'd go in, right, and what are typical things that people might, you might order?

Michael: OK. Well, for me I'm a bitter man, OK.

Ann: Ha-ha. That's, uh, OK.

Michael: Ha-ha. OK, that doesn't mean to say that I'm . . . ha-ha.

Ann: I didn't know, ha-ha.

Michael: No, bitter means, OK - doesn't mean I'm angry or anything like that. No, it means, uh, bitter is a type of beer that's really not so popular in the States, I believe, and, and certainly not here in which the lager-type beers are much more popular. Bitter, I believe, has, uh, a shorter brewing period, and it's called bitter because it has a bitter, sort of, taste to it. And that kind of beer is not served cold.

Ann: Well, that's very interesting. Now that's a big difference.

Michael: That's a huge difference, OK.

Ann: Huge.