Comments for Reporting Asia News Blog

Comment on The Pig & Whistle English Pub in Osaka Closes its Doors for the Last Time! by Hautis

Hautis — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:14:05 +0000

Sad day indeed. Although you have the luxury of choice in clubs, bars, izakayas and what-not, there is virtually nothing to replace P & W around the Namba / Shinsaibashi area. The easy access, lively atmosphere, great music and affordable beer made the place the destination of choice either for a late friday beer after a nibble at a restaurant or a final call for a shopping spree. I truly am sad that my favourite spot just to kick back and have a beer vanished to thin air.

So what I want to know is, who will take the torch from P & W? There are is Murphy’s, number of Hub’s and some gaijin-bars like Zerro, but non of those have the same laidback atmosphere to P & W.

Comment on The Pig & Whistle English Pub in Osaka Closes its Doors for the Last Time! by John

John — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:55:10 +0000

It’s really unfortunate, I hope Jomu finds a new location and reopens. Always a fun place to get a beer, and the first bar I ever went to in Japan, my first night there. I only went in the Shinsaibashi one (saw the Kyoto one from outside, never managed to go in), but went numerous times, great times…

Comment on The Pig & Whistle English Pub in Osaka Closes its Doors for the Last Time! by Jim Teare

Jim Teare — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:41:24 +0000

…and a fine set of darts they are too…

Comment on The Pig & Whistle English Pub in Osaka Closes its Doors for the Last Time! by reportingasia

reportingasia — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:17:47 +0000

So the Pig is about to close.
I must have been the first ever customer to walk through the Piggery doors.
There was a party to welcome new teachers to the company I used to work for and the secretary breathed that there was this new pub in Shinsaibashi and it was ENGLISH!!!.
“The only English pub in Osaka!”
As luck would have it it was the opening night of the Pig.
The location was different to the one now.
This is going back about thirty years,and the area was swarming with kimono clad Mama Sans,young hostesses dressed in fur coats,hosts strutting in and out of their clubs arm in arm with old women, and menacing looking guys in sunglasses ( a yakuza group was headquartered just around the corner as I was later to find out to my cost,but that is another story).
Now,this area is run down and seedy,but in the late seventies it was a bit of a glittering boomtown.
I remember Mori San welcoming me in.His hair was black in those days.
As pubs go,it seemed OK,but nothing special.There were better places to go.
Discos,for example,where you could get a free gaijin membership deluxe pass for nothing,and eat and drink for free and score at will.The bosses reckoned that by having gaijin in the discos,more Japanese would want to go and meet them and bring in the filthy lucre and so it proved to be true.
Discos came and went,but the Pig survived.
It started to boom when Mori San hired my Swedish friend Anders,later to become the right hand man of the boss of the late unlamented Nova.
Pretty soon it became the in-place for the new gaijin in town and Scottish barmen and Austrian and French all worked behind the bar at the Pig.
Needless to say lots of hanky panky went on at the top of the stairs.It was a lot of fun to be a young,English buck gaijin in those days.
Since then ,there has been murders in the Pig (a deranged looney Frenchman stabbed three people to death ). I remember on that night,a guy stopped me on the street and asked me if I knew any good pubs.I directed him to the Pig,and I always wondered what his reaction must have been.People have met their future wives there,had illicit affairs there and lots more.
I scampered to Rio for a year and upon my return found not one Pig,but three.
Business must have been good.
It continued right up to a few years ago,and then competition,high rent and the economy started to turn the screws.Gaijins left in droves..the Umeda Pig closed it’s doors and I got married and left Japan.Yet the news that the final Pig has gone to the great sty in the sky was really sad news.

Richard

Richard Downing

Comment on The Pig & Whistle English Pub in Osaka Closes its Doors for the Last Time! by Steve Newman

Steve Newman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:48:29 +0000

I remember Jim Teare as the scalawag who ran off with my darts AND wife. I paid good money for those darts.

Comment on The Pig & Whistle English Pub in Osaka Closes its Doors for the Last Time! by Jim Teare

Jim Teare — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:27:07 +0000

The dart board of the Umeda Pig (pictured) was the centre of my attention for many hours a decade or so ago. I had some cracking games in there, forgetting the day job. The old beer token system was like a second currency among gaijin in Osaka. Asuka can still be found in her own bar, the Red Lion. I think a Guinness in the Umeda Pig and the old Shin-Pig was 850 yen in 1997/98 and I don’t think it has gone up. A beer in London costs more than a beer in Osaka these days, but I bet the operating costs didn’t stay the same. You don’t get the variety of life in the average bar that there was in the Pig, but then that could be a good thing!

Comment on Reporting Asia on Porsche Carrera Cup Asia Round 5, Zhuhai, China. by Gaye Hawnt

Gaye Hawnt — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:24:59 +0000

Go CJ. Well Done. We are supporting you from the U.K.

Comment on Politics vs Olympics by Politics vs Olympics

Politics vs Olympics — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:32:17 +0000

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