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
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