In Search of the Hangover-less Drinking Session

It’s not often that you go to a restaurant or bar where service includes a hangover remedy. But this is what happened to us one night in Tokyo.  

 Over the course of our sake research trips, we’ve established the practice of landing at Haneda or Narita in the late afternoon, checking in to our hotel and then quickly heading out for dinner. By this time, it’s about 7 a.m. Toronto and New York time, and we need to get some food in our stomachs and then try to adjust to the time change before the next day’s brewery visits.

On one trip, we decided to visit a kappo, or Japanese cuisine, restaurant named Sanbuntei in Hibiya. Sanbuntei, which offers a wide range of sake from across Japan, started as a standing bar in Higashiginza and then expanded to a modern and comfortable space in Hibiya’s Midtown complex. In addition to its calm and meditative atmosphere, fresh fish from the Toyosu market and hot pot specialties, I loved the beautiful collection of ceramic and lacquerware serving dishes Sanbutei uses for service.

The first thing we noticed on the table was a handsome gourd-shaped ironware dish, filled with five saffron-colored, triangular pills, exactly the number of people in our party. They looked like some sort of medicine, or maybe an herbal supplement. We inquired about them, and were told they were ukon, or turmeric pills, and that if we swallowed one before starting to drink and eat, this would help prevent a hangover the next day.

I’ve heard that sake does not result in hangovers, but I’m not sure that’s true, and based on the presence of these pills, it seems that Japanese people don’t believe that, either. At a sake dinner in New York in 2014, when I was just starting to learn about sake, I was seated next to Yasuyuki Yoshida of Yoshida Brewery, the Ishikawa brewery that makes the Tedorigawa brand of sake. The Joy of Sake tasting event was in town that week, and along with it, many brewers from Japan. Yoshida had not yet appeared in the film The Birth of Sake, and had not yet succeeded his father as president of the brewery. But he knew all about how to drink sake. He advised me that for every small glass of sake that I drank, it was a good idea to have an entire glass of water. This was a practical, pill-free way to reduce the chances of a hangover the next day.

I got in touch with a helpful Sanbutei representative, Takeshi Hikita, to ask him about the restaurant’s herbal preventive medicine service. He told me that ukon supplements as hangover prevention have been a thing for about the past 20 years in Japan. They’re often sold at the corner cashier booths at izakayas; the Hibiya store has from its inception offered complimentary ukon supplements to customers.  

 Known more commonly as a seasoning or dye, turmeric’s use dates back 4,000 years in India. It arrived in China around 700 and probably in Japan not too long after that. There’s been a lot of research into the health benefits of turmeric—namely its anti-inflammatory powers—and we now commonly see it in lattes, smoothies, grain bowls and other purportedly healthy foods. It’s believed to help alleviate symptoms of conditions ranging from arthritis to Crohn’s and liver disease. In Japan, Hikita told me, its popularity has grown over the past 10 years

 A quick look online will call up all sorts of turmeric and hangover content. Here’s a YouTube video that I found particularly informative. Based on this and other sources it seems that the bioavailability (the ability of our bodies to access the beneficial properties of something we’ve taken) of turmeric can be an issue. Ingesting it with black pepper and some fat seems to help. This brought to mind our visit with the Miyasaka family in Nagano Prefecture (they make the Masumi brand of sake). During a memorable dinner at the family home, Katsuhiko Miyasaka plied us with some next-level sake drinks, including Masumi arabashiri (first-run sake) mixed with yuzu and black pepper.

 Maybe one day in the future we’ll see a whole new class of “functional sake” drinks that both taste great and enhance our health. I know there’s research ongoing into the health benefits of sake, and I hope to cover this topic in another post. I would not put anything past the perpetually curious and questing brewers we’ve met on our sake journey. It’s a drink that continues to evolve, becoming ever more interesting and delicious.

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