For a relaxing time, I made it Suntory time.

Really, reviewing that scene right now I realized that since the first time I saw, I had internalized enough Japanese to understand the director. He really is trying to use simple words to get his meaning across! In Japanese!

I downloaded the Yakuza 1 remake that month it was free on PlayStation, part of it is going to all these bars and drinking all these fancy mostly-whiskey liquors, with descriptions of how great they are and all their subtleties, and then one of the liquors is just Beefeater Gin, described in the same fawning way and it’s like wait…

(Until the 00s vodka boom, probably the biggest American brand was Stolichnaya, which was owned by PepsiCo in recompense for their USSR production.)

((Contrast how the American “Bacardi” is unapproved appropriation of a brand that was nationalized by Cuba))

(((After the collapse Pepsi got paid in obsolete warships for scrap, briefly making them one of the biggest naval powers on Earth)))

There is a whiskey market cycle based on how long it takes to age. In boom times, distillers invest in production and set it to age; people decide whiskey is overpriced crap and they then go bankrupt; brokers auction it to blenders who get good stuff cheap and then blend it, they release good stuff cheap; people notice and whiskey enters a boom; more blenders compete for a declining stock of aged whiskey; whiskey becomes overpriced crap.