Six colleagues sit down at an izakaya. The table is still being wiped. Nobody has looked at a menu.
The most senior person raises a hand and says four syllables: "とりあえず生。"
The staff member says "生、6つですね" and leaves. The ordering problem is solved. It took four seconds. Now everyone can actually read the food menu like human beings.
とりあえず (toriaezu) means "for now, before anything else". 生 (nama) is short for 生ビール, draft beer. Together: "draft to start with, we'll figure the rest out".
It exists because Japanese group dining has a structure. Nobody eats until everyone has a drink, and nobody wants to be the person holding up the table by reading a cocktail list. So the group defaults, instantly, to the one drink everyone can accept. The needs of six people are resolved before the wet cloth has left the table.
It is also a small piece of theatre. Saying it correctly — flat, slightly weary, without looking at the menu — signals that you have done this a thousand times. Foreigners who deploy it at the right moment get a reaction out of all proportion to the effort involved.
Modern update, and this matters: it is no longer assumed everyone drinks. "とりあえず生で、あとウーロン茶2つ" is completely normal, and younger Japanese people are far more relaxed about this than the stereotype suggests. Ordering ウーロン茶 (oolong tea) is not a confession.
This looks like a drinking phrase. It is actually a time-management protocol. Japanese social life is full of these — tiny fixed sentences that dissolve a coordination problem instantly so nobody has to negotiate in public. Learn the sentence and you have learned the underlying move: in a group, the polite thing is to remove the decision, not to offer more options.