Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has told fellow lawmakers that nights of hard drinking with David Cameron and other visiting dignitaries formed part of his diplomacy.
Noda, a well-known aficionado of “sake”, said he “chugged” down cups of the rice wine with the British prime minister and separately the then-US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the Yomiuri Shimbun said Thursday.
“When I was a finance minister, I chugged them down with Treasury Secretary Geithner. He loved ‘Kamotsuru’,” a sake from western Hiroshima prefecture, Noda said as lawmakers from his Democratic Party of Japan launched a group to promote Japanese drinks abroad.
“At the prime minister’s official residence, I chugged them down with British Prime Minister Cameron,” he told the gathering.
Noda, who led the nation in 2011-2012, was seen as a pragmatist who worked well with foreign leaders, including US President Barack Obama, but sometimes struggled with his own ill-disciplined party.
He was voted out of office in December and replaced by his conservative rival Shinzo Abe.
Cameron last year accidentally left his eight-year-old daughter Nancy at a Buckinghamshire pub after a mix up with his wife Samantha following Sunday lunchtime drinks.
Nancy Cameron wandered off to the toilets while the premier and his wife were arranging lifts from The Plough in Cadsden near his country residence outside London, and the couple only realised she was missing once they got home.
A spokeswoman would not say whether or not Cameron had drunk alcohol when the incident happened.
Japan ex-PM 'chugged rice wine' with Cameron
