The Smell of Beer

The bus door opened, and an elderly man got on.
The seats were full, so he stood right near me.
Perhaps he had been walking around, as he was wiping his slightly sweaty forehead with a handkerchief.
At that moment, a nostalgic scent hit my nose.
I wrote "hit" because it was by no means a pleasant fragrance.

“A father who has a son dreams of drinking with him.
You ruined that.”
My father, who offered beer to me when I was still a teenager and legally too young to drink.
“It gives me a headache,”
I said, turning it down after just one glass, and my father looked disappointed.
“But you drink it like you enjoy it...”
he said, pouring beer into his own glass with deep regret.

My father would gulp down beer while eating white rice, saying, "It's just like tea."
Since he would even drink beer while eating Japanese sweets, he must have truly treated it like tea.
In contrast, my mother's side of the family cannot hold their liquor.
I had assumed I inherited my mother's blood.

In my student days, not participating in drinking parties was equivalent to losing out on one of life's pleasures.
At one party, a friend offered me sake.
A friend who happened to be sitting next to me said,
“This is delicious, it's dry. Want a little?”
Usually I would refuse, but perhaps I was in a good mood that day, so I accepted the leftover sake cup and started drinking.
I found that the alcohol I thought I was weak to and didn't like actually tasted good, and not only could I keep drinking, but I didn't get drunk.

I tried it a few more times after that.
In the end, it was only beer that gave me a headache.
On the other hand, my father could hold his liquor, but he didn't like sake or shochu.
With our tastes and constitutions not matching, my father was a home drinker while I only drank outside.
The opportunity for our glasses and cups to clink together never came.
My father, who preferred cold beer even in winter, came home one day in January carrying a bottle of beer.
He opened the cap and started drinking, but halfway through, he showed signs of struggling to breathe and stopped drinking.
It was the first time I had seen my father not finish a single bottle of beer.


And that was his last beer.

On sunny summer holidays, my father liked to lie on the roof of our house, tanning his skin and sweating.
Of course, when he came back inside, it was time for beer.
He also drank often at the baseball stadium.
At the very top of the infield seats near the outfield at Jingu Stadium, where the wind blew through, he would drink quietly without heckling.
In spring and autumn, he would take my mother to a large park and drink while looking at the flowers.
He would drink the first glass in one go, and the second at his own pace.
I can picture him drinking beer poured into a glass, but at the same time, I am reminded of the smell.

From my sweaty father, I could smell a bit of beer.
It was a "smell," not the "fragrance" I felt from his hair when he gave me a piggyback ride as a child.
I didn't dislike it.

The man standing next to me sat down further away when a seat opened up two stops later.

“In the cold winter, well,
it's good in its own way, but
beer is definitely for summer.
The first glass is especially the best.”
It wasn't the anniversary of his death, but I bought some beer and went to visit his grave.
I placed the sweaty can in front of the grave.
My father's beer never decreases.
Instead, I, who have become a bit more used to beer and don't get dizzy after one glass, drink the canned beer.
It's nice to enjoy a wordless conversation while savoring the bitterness slowly instead of drinking it all at once.
I finished the beer, left the empty can at the grave, and headed to the bus stop to go home.


When I got on the bus, a child sitting in front of me, poking their head out, made a slightly disgusted face.
I must have smelled like my father.
“You'll drink eventually too,
for sure.”
Perhaps sensing that silent murmur in my heart, the child hugged the father sitting next to them.

Collection of Essays on Memories with My Father [Narrative Plot Version, Latest Edition]

The link above.

Other essays are

Ryo Kono's Freehand Introduction

can be found here.