Chris Bunting, who is probably best known among whisky drinkers for his www.Nonjatta.com blog about Japanese whisky, has just published a new guide to Japanese alcohol culture with Tuttle Publishing Ltd.

Drinking Japan is a 288-page guide based on a year and a half spent travelling around Japan exploring its unique alcohol culture.

Bunting says: “Many people may know me for various bits of writing I have done about Japanese whisky, but I have tried to go beyond that in Drinking Japan. It explores the history and development of Japanese whisky and there are detailed descriptions of the best of Japan’s world-famous whisky bars, but the book is also probably the first attempt in English to comprehensively explore the whole of Japanese alcohol culture.”

“Researching Japanese whisky gradually convinced me that trying to it in isolation from its environment, as an odd offshoot of the Scottish whisky, was a fundamental misunderstanding. I came to realise that I had to try to look at it in the context of the whole of Japanese alcohol culture and history, and that is the journey Drinking Japan took me on,” Bunting says.

“I think it really is the first attempt to comprehensively look at this culture in English.”

Drinking Japan offers extensive descriptions of Japanese alcohol’s development from prehistory to the extraordinary diversity it shows today. As well as whisky, there is a long chapter on the history of sake and the contemporary sake world, and the first extensive descriptions in an English-language book of Japan’s indigenous spirits, shochu and awamori. Whole chapters are devoted to the country’s beer and wine industries, offering insights that have until now not been available to readers in English, and there is also discussion of the development of Japan’s unique bar tending culture and its critical role in the postwar flowering of the Japanese bar scene.

The book is also practical guide, offering richly illustrated reviews of 122 of Bunting’s favourite bars in Japan. The entries are written with the newly arrived visitor to Japan in mind, with detailed price guides, language help, advice on food and drink choices, and maps and directions to get visitors to the bars if they go to Japan. There is an appendix offering help to the complete beginner on reading Japanese alcohol labels and tackling other language problems.

Half of the author’s earnings will be donated to the Japanese Red Cross Society’s earthquake relief effort.

Book site: http://drinkingjapan.com/
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Drinking-Japan-Japans-Drinks-Establishments/dp/4805310545/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303117216&sr=1-1
Publisher: http://tuttlepublishing.com/