People may have had more opportunities to drink alcohol at welcome parties and other events since the start of the new fiscal year in April, with restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic having been eased, but there is also growing interest in the "sober curious" lifestyle, in which people opt not to drink even if they can.

This lifestyle has been taking hold in Fukuoka Prefecture, where nonalcoholic cocktails offered at bars seem to be changing people’s perceptions about drinking.

Masatsugu Kajita, 53, a store designer in Kitakyushu, quit drinking alcohol last July after contracting COVID-19. Until then, almost every day he had been drinking one or two cans of beer and two or three cans of chūhai cocktails, in addition to glasses of shōchū (distilled spirit) — describing himself as having been "close to an alcoholic.”