Going to the Movies

Since yesterday was such a windy, rainy day, I figured I'd engage in the time-honored tradition of spending part of those days at the movies. Having picked a japanese animation movie, I went up to the cashier, who proceeded to cram about eight paragraphs of information and questions into about two minutes. It roughly boiled down to finding out my preferred seating area in the theater and assigning me a specific seat, for which I proceeded to cough up about $18. Ouch.

Having my seat already secured, I knew I could take my time, since I didn't need to fight the crowd of about 9 other people who were also watching a movie aimed at kids on what happens to be the first Monday of the Japanese school year. I eventually installed myself on seat H18 just in time to catch the beginning of the commercials. At that theater, there weren't any ads like in most US theaters, and they contented themselves in alternating short clips of puppies playing (yea, it was cute) and random informational clips (gems such as "don't trip on the stairs", "don't kick the chair in front of you", and the more usual "in case of fire here's what we hope you'll do instead of panicking and hiding under your folding seat"). That was followed by maybe 3 or 4 trailers for upcoming movies, and before we knew it, the feature film. All in all, most enjoyable if rather pricey.

As far as flasbacks go, I guess this one is right up there with biking in the rain. Last movie I saw in Japan, twelve years ago, was a japanese animation (Princess Mononoke, from Ghibli Studios; it had just come out, so my seat preference then had been boiled down to "what's still available", which turned out to be a seat roughly 3 inches from the projection screen... I mostly remember the characters being reeeeeally tall, with tiny heads).