The Japanese Cinema Experience

Yesterday I went to my first cinema in Japan, to see Spiderman 3 with two friends from school, Misuzu and Yoshiko. I cycled over to the school to meet them at about 1:30, since they had classes on that morning (Yes, on a Saturday!) because exams are coming up next week, or something like that. Students here are overworked so much. Anyway, after meeting them at school and making use of the school's parking for my bike, we went and waited for the bus we needed to catch to Nijo, where the Toho Cinemas are.

The bus ride was surprisingly long, especially considering that Nijo is close by to my house, and not that far by bike. I guess making the detour to the school beforehand made the trip much longer. We finally got there and just in time too. Since cinemas are so busy here, and the tickets are reserved seating, it's always best to get in early. Luckily my friend had planned ahead though, and bought us all tickets a few days earlier on her mobile phone. Once you've purchased them that way you just go to the computer terminal in the cinema lobby, enter your phone number, ticket code and a password and it prints off your tickets for you! Very good, and it meant we got pretty excellent seats.

When you order food at the cinema, they put it all on a tray for you and give you refresher towels and stuff too. It's pretty great service. I ordered a Fried Potato Set (Think great fries and a coke). And these fries were pretty damn good, much better than any McDonald's ones I've had. That said, this all wasn't cheap. The ticket cost 1000 yen and the food was 550 yen. After getting used to $5 for a cinema ticket in Australia, that's a lot of money.

When you get into the cinema the first thing they play is a short film explaining the rules while trying to be entertaining. It was done by an English voice actor and subtitled in Japanese, and the English was a bit weird... haha. But it was amusing, even though it seemed a bit much. The weird thing about Japanese cinemas is that they are deadly silent. No one talks, no loud obnoxious laughter or cheering... it's just silent the whole way through, no exaguration at all.

Even after the movie is over and the credits roll, the lights stay off and people stay silent. You have to wait for the credits to end for the lights to come back on, if you don't want to stumble over people to try and find your way out in the dark. After you do leave though, there's two cinema workers waiting outside the exit. One to take your tray and throw out any papers and rubbish, and the other to collect paper drink cups/lids etc. Talk about handy!

After the movie we all went home pretty quickly, since it was getting late and we needed to be home for dinner etc... I caught the bus back to school to collect my bike and made my way home.

Today was spent doing nothing much at all! I helped out a bit with the gardening and watched stuff on the computer and did no proper study at all!