Video game arcades are evidently very popular in Japan, more so than they are in the U.S.  We may have gotten this impression in part because we spent so much time in cities; if there is suburban sprawl in Japan the way we have in the U.S. I never saw it.  Tony and I spent a lot of time playing video games wherever we went, and in particular got hooked on playing "House of the Dead 2".  Wherever we went we looked for the local Sega World, which was typically two or more floors of a building devoted to coin-operated video games.  The first we visited was probably actually in Nara, but later that day we went to the Sega World at the top of the Isetan department store in the Kyoto train station.

Interactive music games are a particular genre of games that are especially popular in Japan right now.  We saw a lot of people playing a game in which they would stand on a platform and follow dance steps according computer instructions.  How well they kept up with the dance steps determined their score.  (I forget the name of this game - Tony may remember.)  Beatmania was similar: in it the player controls a record turntable to make hip-hop or rap music "scratches" as a nightclub DJ would, according to the patterns prescribed by the game.  In Kyoto we saw a new game that was a complete drumset: the player sat and hit the drums according to the games instructions.  There were a number of similar games involving guitars.  A Canadian English teacher we met in Miyajima observed that the Japanese seem to enjoy games in which they follow explicit instructions.

I am afraid that Tony may have the impression that Japan is like a giant DisneyWorld, and that all one does there is play video games.  I know that if we had been traveling with his mother we probably wouldn't have devoted so much time to SegaWorld.

 

 

In any case our Sega Dreamcast is a great souvenir of Japan.  Whenever we play House of the Dead 2 it is as though we are transported back to the top floor of the Isetan at the Kyoto Train Station.  "We're meeting G over there..."