DUG

DUG is an underground bar in Shinjuku where Midori and Toru Watanabe meet over vodka and tonics. In a brief afternoon visit, the bar becomes a refuge from embarrassment and a quiet setting for Midori to disclose both her private difficulties and her pleasure in Watanabe’s earlier kiss.

Setting and Use

After German class, Midori and Watanabe take a bus to Shinjuku and go to DUG, behind the Kinokuniya bookshop. They each begin with two vodka and tonics. Midori explains that she comes there occasionally because the bar does not make people feel embarrassed about drinking in the afternoon.

That welcome matters to her personally: she sometimes seeks a vodka and tonic there when the world becomes too hard to live in. DUG is not presented as a solution to her problems, but as a place where she can step away from the pressure of the outside world without having to justify the hour or her need for a drink.

Conversation and Relationship

When Watanabe asks whether the world gets hard to live in, Midori answers that she has her own special little problems. The exchange remains understated: she signals difficulty without explaining those problems, and the bar’s informal atmosphere allows the admission to stand without becoming a confession.

The conversation also turns to a Sunday visit when Watanabe kissed her. Midori says she has been thinking about it and that it was nice—really nice. Her words make clear that the kiss stayed with her and that she is willing to tell him so. DUG thus holds two kinds of candor in the same scene: Midori’s acknowledgment that life can be difficult, and her open expression of pleasure in their growing intimacy.

Narrative Significance

The scene brings together refuge and emotional approach. Midori’s occasional visits to DUG belong to her way of facing private hardship; this visit, shared with Watanabe, also gives her room to revisit the kiss and affirm its significance. The bar’s ordinary details—an afternoon drink, ice rattling in a glass, and a second round—frame a shift toward greater frankness without resolving the difficulties she has only hinted at.