More than 10 years ago, I was sitting in a small wine bar in Nishiazabu Tokyo Japan when I noticed an unusual bottle of Bénédictine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bénédictine
It wasn’t something you normally saw there. The owner explained that it had been distributed through Germany, and for whatever reason, the bottle caught my attention immediately. There was something about it perhaps the rarity, perhaps simply the moment — and I bought it on the spot. The owner seemed genuinely pleased that I appreciated it enough to take it.
Life moved on, as it always does. A few years later, the owner and I had a disagreement. It isn’t impossible given the environment was none other than “special” and in a way many foreigners wouldn’t expect. There was a night when I stopped the owner from calling the Police on a foreign customer arguing over minutia. Another night, it was my turn and nothing dramatic in the grand scheme of life, but enough that I stopped going to the wine bar altogether. I think I was banned, and I cannot remember but it was a situation of circumstance. The bottle remained there, not forgotten in the background of time, neither abandoned or an unfinished chapter.
Five years passed; one evening, while walking through Ginza, I suddenly heard someone calling my name. I turned around, and there he was — the owner of the wine bar. Older perhaps, but smiling in the same familiar way. He told me he had opened a new wine bar and asked if I would come visit him sometime.
About a year later, curiosity or perhaps nostalgia brought me there. Slowly, I became a regular again. Whatever disagreement had existed between us had dissolved into the distance, overtaken by time, routine, and the strange comfort of familiarity.
Then last night, while sitting at the bar, I suddenly remembered the old bottle of Bénédictine. I laughed and asked him, almost jokingly, “Whatever happened to that bottle I abandoned all those years ago?” Without hesitation, he smiled and said, “Of course I still have it.” In full view of the customers, he walked over to the storage shelves behind the bar, moved aside a few bottles, and carefully pulled it out.
The bottle was nearly empty. Somehow, over the years, it had clearly been opened and consumed little by little — by whom, I never asked. Maybe by staff, maybe by friends, maybe simply by time itself. But there was still just enough left for one final glass.
And so, after ten years, disagreements, distance, and chance encounters in the streets of Ginza, I ended up drinking the last glass of the bottle I had once lost in a time warp.