Up until the week of June 4th Ryan's Irish Pub served imported beer and decent fish and chips from the seventh floor of the Kondo Building right at the edge of Sannomiya Station in Kobe. The authorities shut it down in the early part of that week. Spectacular rumors have since trickled through the foreign community in Kobe about what exactly happened to the pub's owner, Alan Ryan. This quote from a forum generally sums up the ones I have heard.

This is kind of a longshot, but does anyone know what the gently caress happened with Alan at Ryan's Irish Pub in Kobe? I've heard all kinds of crazy stories, including he kidnapped his kids and had the Yak after him. All I know for sure is the pub closed very suddenly.

Any Kansai folks know what happened?

The Big Daikon has quite a bit of discussion (though aside from that quoted below not too revealing)...

Yo. Chatted to a Japanese guy at the gym yesterday about Ryans Bar in Kobe. The bar has been going (seemingly strong) for years. According to this guy, the bar has closed down, and the owner has kidnapped his wife's kids (who had custody) and shot through to Ireland. Also, he apparently leaves debts behind of around 70 million yen to various people he has borrowed money from including patrons of the bar. Plus employees have not been paid... Simply amazing considering the bar's following in Kobe. It was one of the more popular placces and was always packed on weekends. Amazing.

That is pretty accurate. He skipped town, kidnapping his children and leaving all the debt and shit to be cleaned up by everyone else.
BTW, it was not a popular hang out to most people. Only losers without any other place to go would go there to puke at the end of the night.
He was rude and offensive. In fact, he hadn't paid one girl behind the bar for some 2 years! Somebody should ask her if getting boned by a pasty, lying mic made up for not getting paid?!
I feel sorry for his ex-wife and her family. They put up the 35 million in key money for the damn bar! Most sane individuals couldn't understand why anybody would want to go to his bar.
It all makes sense now. Apparently, people were sane enough to start to stay away from the place.
Anyways, I wanna know what happened to his Korean girlfriend. She was a nice girl.
And, by the way, does anybody know what happened to the Korean girl that used to bartend at KRAC?

Did she go by the name "Eikyou"?

well his site now reads:

I would like to thank everyone for the years of friendship and patronage.
Ryans Irish Pub Kobe has been closed and will not be reopening.
I have returned permanently to Ireland to live with my children.
Alan Ryan

you dont hear much about parents running back to Ireland with their kids here & it's not a very big country, the wife could track them down easily enough, if she dosent already know where they are

emperor wrote:it's not a very big country, the wife could track them down easily enough, if she dosent already know where they are

He's most likely drunk in a pub trying to maintain Ireland's position in the Per Capita Beer Consumption standings or even move it up to #1.

maybe, or maybe he's between the couch and the fridge with a beer in hand - Sunday is Gaelic football day - and someone has to watch the kids... ( although he seems a bit too active to be the boozehound type )

maybe the pub wasnt doing as well in the last couple of years, meanwhile the economy in Ireland is doing fairly well and was tempting him back...?
maybe he preferred the kids being schooled in Ireland - our education system is pretty decent, and perhaps easier on the kids in regards to teasing and them being half and half?
& maybe the wife just wasnt willing to move...?

emperor wrote:you dont hear much about parents running back to Ireland with their kids here & it's not a very big country, the wife could track them down easily enough, if she dosent already know where they are

It's dead easy. Ireland doesn't require registration to live there, you just need to have an Irish passport. Get a little black work and bob's your uncle. If you're Irish, Ireland is the place to escape.

But of course, if his kids are going to school they will be registered I suppose.

he'd probably re-establish contact with family and friends: you watch them & youve got him

also, if the kids are half-japanese they'll tend to stick out a lot more in a town in the west of Ireland or even cities like Dublin or Cork, than say a city in California

it seems we have around 14,000 police and 4 million people - thats about 285 people per garda - with another 2mins of research I'm sure I could equate some kind of comparison with other countries and present another dynamic on how quickly someone could be tracked down....

but if I were planning on hiding - northern Canada or eastern Russia look like safer bets...

emperor wrote:thats about 285 people per wanker

Fixed.

But yeah, fair point. Although there are a shit-ton of Chinese in Dublin these days.

emperor wrote:but if I were planning on hiding - northern Canada or eastern Russia look like safer bets...

I don't know if it is a question of hiding or not. Assuming the custody statement is correct, what recourse will Irish Law provide the mother in "re-patrioting" kids who are Irish based on birth and their father's nationality. She will have to do some heavy court work, because most countries don't allow non-nationals to take possession of nationals, especially children, without heavy legal jurisdiction. Hense "all the child-nappings".

Given the vagueness of Japanese divorce cases, she might be hard pressed to prove custody in the first place. It's not as clear as courts are in for example, the US.

He may be home in the pub with a freebe. (the exception to that would be if the fellows with missing pinkies decide to teach him a lesson in money manners).

I find this kind of thing morbidly fascinating and I wish I knew more of the backstory. What makes a guy just up and leave like that, taking the kids, and deserting his wife? It has to be an aggregate of factors. It couldn't just be debt because he would have taken his wife too (I guess?). On the flipside it couldn't have just been marital strife, because he could have divorced or separated from the wife and continued to make a go of his well-established business.


I went to his pub once, about eight years ago and never felt the urge to go back there. Not that there was anything really bad about the place, just that it was completely unremarkable.

eighty5er wrote:Fixed.

But yeah, fair point. Although there are a shit-ton of Chinese in Dublin these days.

I had expected to see and did see a lot of E. Europeans in Dublin when I visited. The large number of Chinese, compared to England, was a surprise.

Not sure about the "shit-ton" characterization. Is this a commonly used measure in Ireland?

amdg wrote:On the flipside it couldn't have just been marital strife, because he could have divorced or separated from the wife and continued to make a go of his well-established business.

It's pretty well established that in case of a divorce, especially with a foreign father and a Japanese mother, the father will never see his kids again if the mother doesn't want him to. As I understand it, visitation rights in Japan, even if granted, can't be enforced. And custody would never be given to a foreign father, under any circumstances. Sounds to me like this guy decided that the risk of being an international fugitive was a better gamble than the risk of never seeing his kids again.

omae mona wrote:It's pretty well established that in case of a divorce, especially with a foreign father and a Japanese mother, the father will never see his kids again if the mother doesn't want him to. As I understand it, visitation rights in Japan, even if granted, can't be enforced. And custody would never be given to a foreign father, under any circumstances. Sounds to me like this guy decided that the risk of being an international fugitive was a better gamble than the risk of never seeing his kids again.

Yeah but childcare payments are also pretty much unenforced, so most guys I know who are divorced work out a quid pro quo deal with the ex wife - a certain amount per month in exchange for a certain custody time. "You don't give me custody for certain weekends, you don't see any cash from me", kind of thing. Anyway, it's pretty complicated - she could be financially independent, etc etc etc. Sad.

Typhoon wrote:"shit-ton" ... Is this a commonly used measure in Ireland?

there was once a time when we measured population statistics by census, now we use a giant weighing scales & fill one side with tonnes of shit and the other with people

eighty5er wrote:metric-tonnes of Mandarian-speakin-motherfuckers

yeah there are plenty - but nearly all of them are in their early to mid 20's & there seem to be very few families with kids

gboothe wrote:what recourse will Irish Law provide the mother in "re-patrioting" kids who are Irish based on birth and their father's nationality.

some relevant laws/acts here
of particular note is]dealt with wrongful retention of children. Implemented the Hague Convention 1980 and the Luxembourg Convention 1980.
[/I] which I think involves repatriating children unlawfully removed from or taken to the state.

No matter what happens legally or not, the children loose on this one. This selfishness, by one or both of the parents, will have a lasting impact on the kids. That sucks...

I've never been to the bar and don't know the owner.

However, large debt + yak involvement = Big Problems. He may have been threatened that he better pay up soon or one of his kids might have an "accident". This is a not-uncommon extortion / debt collection yak move.

Maybe the guy is a total prick and just ran off with his kids... The situation does look a bit more complicated than that however.

L S wrote:No matter what happens legally or not, the children loose on this one. This selfishness, by one or both of the parents, will have a lasting impact on the kids. That sucks...

Yeah O.K. Dr Phil.
You have no clue what is going on with that family so saying something like that is f __in' dumb. It might be the BEST thing that ever happened to these kids ( thats what I suppose) but who knows?

Hawaiibadboy wrote:Yeah O.K. Dr Phil.

ha! Now THAT was funny.

Yeah he fucked off and stole the kids

Rumors had it the place wasn't just a drinkers spot that ran up big debts but was going to turn into a drug den, some Korean syndicate working for the Yamaguchi own the place now

well as bad as i feel for the mother losing her kids, from the guy's point of view he may have made the right choice. the simple fact of the matter is that a foreign father here would never get custody and more than likely never see his kids again. said kids would have likely been quite thoroughly brainwashed by mother and her family so as to never even want to make contact with him again.

i'm not saying i condone the guy for leaving a shitpile of debt behind and leaving other people to clean up the mess but it may have been his best option.

as far as the kids being sent back to japan, my view on that is if japan wants its abducted children back, they can grow the hell up, stop being racist motherfuckers in divorce proceedings, allow joint custody, sign the hague convention and play by the rules like everyone else. until then, fuck'em.