Drinking and Driving - 3/07

"Are you driving?" is the question I hear whenever we go to a party. Be it a Sony event, someone's home or recently, Eric's class dinner party, I hesitate before answering. My host is hovering over me with a cold, refreshing looking bottle of beer and they won't pour if they know I'm driving later.

It doesn't matter that we won't be going home for several hours. And there's a giant meal being served. I'm simply not allowed to modulate my own drinking. If you're driving, nothing. If you're not driving, a vast quantity of first beer, then sake will flow all evening.

So I say "Dave's driving" and dive right in.

I'm really impressed about how seriously drinking and driving is taken. At Eric's class party, a table full of moms were making a big dent in the cache of alcohol (and put on quite a good karoke show). Dave's the only dad because Japanese men work til midnight, so I was starting to wonder how many cabs it would take to get a classroom's worth of mom and kids home.

Ah, then the bus pulls up. Impressive.

Here's my question. Does the bus drop each of them at their doorstep? to the train? to a group of cabs closer to home? I know it can't possibly bring them to their parked cars.