Japanese Movie Theaters

One of my favorite ways of comparing Japan to the U.S. is with movie theaters. I saw a movie on one of my last days in Japan, and that's when I realized that no trip to the land of the rising sun should be complete without this experience.

It all began when my friend Van said that he had to stop by the theater in Nagoya city one day to pick up tickets to see Wall-E. The movie was just coming out in Japan, and he would be going with his host mom and one of our friends. My first impression upon entering the theater on the top floor of a shopping center was how downright nice it was. Clearly they had the money to make the lobby fancy with stylish architecture, but there were also screens previewing available movies and brochures with times and descriptions of movies. Even the bathrooms were cool, which included implanted dryers in the basin to wash your hands (see the video). And when Van pre-ordered his ticket, he got a free promotional cell phone charm, which seems to be standard prior a movie's release.


After Van told of his adventures when he returned from the movie a week or so later, I knew I had to go for myself. So one night my friends Kaitlyn, Joo, and Joo's host sister Ayaka, and I went to the same theater to see a movie. I showed up earlier than everyone else, and decided to investigate another movie theater in the area to compare show times. After running down the street for 15 minutes with no luck in finding the theater, I turned back and met my friends at the theater. I only every saw this one theater in Japan, so they must be relatively rare, or at least well-hidden.

I didn't particularly want to watch Wall-E, especially in English, since I had seen it during the summer in the states, but nothing else looked good and all of the dubbed showings had concluded for the night. Due to the excess amount of foreign movies in Japan, they give the option of watching in Japanese dub or subtitles. Usually, however, the dub versions are aimed toward kids who aren't able to read to subtitles, so at some point on a weeknight only subtitled versions are available. Well, long story short, everyone else wanted to see Wall-E, so I didn't put up a fight.


When we went to buy the tickets, I was struck with how utterly expensive Japan was once again. 1800 yen ($18+) for a ticket?! Luckily for me I was a foreign student, so I got a discount down to 1500 yen. -__- Even luckier for my friends, it happened to be ladies night and they all got in for 1000 yen!! What was cool about when you buy tickets, though, was that you got to pick your assigned seat. I can only suppose this discourages people sneaking in, but it should help the theater keep track of a packed movie too.

It was dinner time, and we opted not to buy the theater food - your typical popcorn but with some tasty alternatives like what looked like tacquitos as well, though too expensive anyway - and picked up stuff from the conbini below the shopping center. They too had an interesting selection, such as tuna and mayo pizza, but I stuck to some fruit and chicken, as I remember (not on pizza).

Finally, we got to the theater itself. Found our assigned seats in the packed house, which were of a very cozy leather variety, and got comfortable. Now, my gaijin friends and I aren't exactly wild and crazy Americans we often get stereotyped as, but I swear we were the loudest ones in that theater. We laughed, we cheered, some of us even got emotional. But the Japanese? Nothing. Silence. It was a very strange experience indeed. Then after the movie, no one moved until the credits were completely over and the lights had turned on.

Like I said, it's a necessary experience. Just save up some money for a few weeks, and find a cool group of friends so you're not the only "loud gaijin." Perhaps not all theaters in Japan are like this, but I have gotten confirmation that they're all rare, expensive, and using assigned seating. Let me know if you guys find something different.

As a side note, that night continued after the movie and we had a lot of fun hanging out. We got some Mr. Donuts, gave "our" trash to random ladies when they heard "us" complaining about the lack of trash cans in Japan (hehe ;_;), hung out at an arcade, got denied into purikura, almost lost "our" ability to have kids by walking under the legs of a huge statue doll, and took tons of pics. Good times.

Video on YouTube

Snowboarding

This past winter I went snowboarding for the eighth time (is it weird that I kept track?), and in two years it's quickly become one of my favorite activities of the season.

Jasmin took me for the first time a week after we started dating, since she obviously couldn't stand being with a guy who didn't know how to shred the slopes. I learned the hard way that your first time is probably not going to be your favorite, if you keep going after that point at all. lol "Snowboarding is harder to learn than skiing, but easier to get better at," she told me, as I struggled to get up after each continuous fall that left my behind more bruised than the last. Well, I knew I didn't have any balance, and that was most likely my problem - not the fact that I had no balance, but my KNOWING that I didn't. :p

I'd actually been skiing since I was in 4th grade or so, going up to various mountains in various states with my family at a rate of about once a year. We initially went up with the scouts in western MD, but we also did one with the church, and started going with family friends to their condo in New York. I hadn't gotten the chance to snowboard before, but I didn't really care since skiing was already so much fun. Besides, I was starting to get pretty good, considering I was only doing it once a year, moving up to teach myself more parallel skiing where I would break quickly from side to side.

Snowboarding was kinda tough to learn after skiing for so long, but I kept at it, and when Jasmin and I went a second time I felt like I had made at least some improvement and could stay up longer than before. Unfortunately, snowboarding is one of those things you can only do during a couple short months of the year 'round these parts. And due to school and expenses we had to stop after the second time. The same thing happened last year, though we started to bring along other friends who were just learning, and Jasmin bought herself a dream snowboard: a new, slick Tokidoki RIDE board with matching boots and bindings. It didn't do good things for her bank account but did cut her individual price in half when we went to the mountain. lol

This year was the best snowboarding yet by far. The first time out, I had my own brand new board, and we went with our friends from last year who each had their own new boards as well. Jasmin's brother was in town from Guam so that he could hit as many mountains as humanly possible (he's been all around the world to find good powder), and he often brought experienced friends with him to the slopes. We had our plan down pat by this year - meet early at Jasmin's, drive as a caravan to the mountain, snowboard for a while with lunch as a break, then on the way home stop at Cracker Barrel for dinner (I LOVE BISCUITS!!). Oh yeah, and that was the day I proposed to her. :p

The next time we went up this year was right after the huge snowstorm (we barely made it there even in our 4-wheel vehicle), the following time was at another slope that was huge and had awesome powder, and the last time was with all of our friends again when Erin ended up busting her leg open from Cat's assassination attempt. I quickly moved up this season from being very comfortable on Beginner green circles, to attempting more Intermediate blue squares and Advanced black diamonds, to actually being somewhat comfortable on black diamonds. :D I even landed a few small jumps from the ground. This was in no small way thanks to the frequency we boarded this year and to the great slopes, but the most important reason was that I was constantly trying to get better.

On the last run, we were with our friend Chris who was going for the first time, and I was assigned to playing sensei. haha I had fun trying to show him the ropes and figure out the best advice to give. It's hard to explain how to snowboard without being out there and trying it, but most of it seems to do with balance: you're standing there with your back straight and knees bent, like coaches will tell people playing any sport, and you want to concentrate on the balance from your head. Leaning forward should bring you into a natural front brake facing the top of the mountain, and leaning back should bring you into a natural back brake facing the bottom of the mountain. Turning side to side this way is called your S's because that's what it should look like in the snow, an easy maneuver that the experts are simply doing to a faster degree.

You want to start out practicing both breaking directions to a complete stop many, many times and hold yourself there to practice balance. Falling is probably even more important to learn since that's how you'll be hurting yourself, so either brace your butt for the impact or land with more of your arm than less to distribute impact. One other very general advice for snowboarding that I like to give is to just think of the board as an extension of yourself and try to do what seems natural to move around. Obviously, you'll need to work to create some good habits in the beginning, and eventually those muscle memories will take over.

Easier said than done I guess, but that's what I've learned so far.