Suntory's spirited strategy

THEY'RE smoky. Stuffy. Chaotic. Elbow room is a luxury, social niceties an afterthought and the food deliberately oversalted. But when spirits are high - in more ways than one - such things don't matter to a Japanese salary man whose sole intention is to pack his daytime persona as straight-laced, subservient model employee back into his manbag so that his real self can come out to play.

Behold the izakaya - a pub with food to you but a way of life to the Japanese, a culture deeply ingrained since the Edo period that's in no danger of dying out any time soon. Certainly not at Tachinomi Marugin - or simply Marugin - a grungy hard-core izakaya that sits on the fringe of Tokyo's shiny Ginza district. Locals and clued-in tourists pack shoulder-to-shoulder in this tight space shrouded in silvery grey smoke as flexible servers coolly slither around, delivering…