The Chu-hi Stand and the Haunch

Walking off the ship and down the pier, it would take about a half an hour to get through the ship yard. It’s a maze of machine shops, ship repair facilities. Sometimes the quickest way was to walk over the dry dock gates. Once outside the front gate, walk one block and you’re on the haunch. The Haunch was a row of bars right outside the main gate of the base in Yokosuka, Japan. All along the street there are about fifty different bars to get a drink at. They had a different bar for everyone’s personality’s and tastes; they had a country western bar, 70’s classic rock bar, hip hop bar, a pop bar, a Japanese rock bar, a death metal bar, an Irish pub, a sports bar; the list goes on and on.

Walking down the ally of the Haunch and passing by all the bars, I headed straight for the JR train station. Behind the train station in a dark, quiet alley was the Chu-Hi Stand. It is this little liquor store and there is no place to sit and all the bottles of alcohol on the shelves had dust on them, you ask the bartender for an apple Chu-hi and he pulls out this large bottle of very strong Shochu alcohol from behind the counter. He starts to fill a large plastic cup to the top, and then adds a little bit of green sour apple flavoring. The taste is indescribable, the apple flavoring accents the Shochu but is not too over powering, and you can’t even tell you are drinking straight alcohol.

Standing out on to the street and sipping my drink, I would play hacky sack with my friends. New sailors to the ship would boast about how much they can drink, so we would take them out to thee Chu-Hi Stand and they would drink 3 (because they are very strong but go down so smooth) and then we would have to carry them back to the ship. The most I have seen anyone drink was 7 of them in one night, he was a seasoned veteran, but could barely function and we found him passed out in the street about fifty feet from the Chu-Hi Stand. He was a big dude and we all had a hell of a time getting him back to the ship.

After a few Chu-Hi’s we would head back out onto the haunch. The first of many stops was Popeye’s; it was a heavy metal bar with cheap strong drinks. This place was one of the most dingiest darkest bars I have ever been in, it was run down and it had a lopsided pool table with missing pool balls and bench seats right out of the back of a car to sit on. It was poorly lit had black marker all over the walls where sailors signed their names over all the years. If you wanted to sit at the small bar counter you would have to sit on three milk crates stacked up and duck taped to each other with a foam pad on top.

After a strong drink at Popeye’s I would bounce in and out of many different bars, having drinks and chatting with friends from our ship and the regulars off the other ships. We would always see sailors that were out on liberty from a different home port come in and try to make it from one end of the Haunch to the other, in one night. Every time my friends and I tried that, we would only make it half way before getting too drunk or running out of money.

There was one bar in particular that I used to always go to called, “The Beat” they played whatever kind of music you were in the mood for. I had my own glass with my name on the side of it that I could drink my Japanese Asahi beer out of. The bar tender was Mickey, a really attractive Japanese girl. Her bar was small, you couldn’t fit more than 10 people in there, we really got to know each other, I would tell her stories about home and my travels and she would try and teach me how to speak Japanese. All I learned to say though, was, “excuse me, what is your name?”, “what is your phone number?” A poor attempt to try and pick up Japanese girls, but sometimes it actually worked.

After a night of heavy drinking out on the Haunch, I would make my way to a mall by the other Yokosuka train station to get a beef bowl to eat. It was basically just a bowl of rice with thin, slow cooked strips of beef on top. The beef was basking in a big pot all day in some kind of secret sauce. We had a joke every time we pull back into port after being underway; when someone would ask what you were doing, we would always say, “I’m going to get a beef bowl and a Chu hi”.

The legal drinking age on base was 20 years old, so I spent a lot of my off time out on the Haunch since I was under age. The shore patrol would roam the streets; keeping order and making sure no one got too drunk and started any fights. All the bars were pretty much open all day and night and it cost five dollars a drink so I have spent almost an entire pay check in 24 hours partying with all my friends. I had all the free room and board on the ship and no bills to pay yet all the money I was making didn’t seem to last me very long.