Electric Arcadeyland

Two weekends ago I went into Tokyo again, in search of another unique Japanese experience. This time, I found it in the arcades littering Tokyo. I had said that I went into an arcade the weekend before that, but the differences between that arcade, and the palaces of entertainment that I visited this weekend are stark, to say the least. All the arcades that I visited had the same basic setup, only varying in the particular games that they contained. Basically they were multi-floored buildings with different kinds of games on each level. I'm going to walk you through an arcade I visited in Shibuya that I thought was the most impressive.

Floor 1: Prize grabbers
Both of these photos are of prize grabber machines. They are the t1000 to america's Terminator. They are better, cleaner, and more effective at stealing your cash. Each costs 100 Yen a pop, meaning one dollar per play. This translates into people spending significant amounts of their hard earned cash on items like this one to the right. All that is in there are thousands of pacifiers, and oddly enough each pacifier is a baby itself, wrapped in swaddling. Japanese baby jesus look-alike, or just plain weird toy? You decide.

2nd Floor: Japan-exclusive Delights
From Horse racing to slots to fighting games, this floor had it all. I'm pretty sure I caught a moment of heartbreak with this guy to the right slapping his head. This floor appeals to the widest variety of games. With various intriguing machines that all take a minimum of 100 yen this is the prime money-grabber for the fat, sweaty palms of this arcade's owner. One class of game that I had never seen before also turned up on this floor. It is a giant game of strategy where the player uses a customized deck of cards that they have to purchase and amass before they can play the game. I suspect that this is yet another ploy to hoover (or should I say kawasaki?) the money from all arcade-goers yen-filled wallets. Here is a picture of one such group of machines. Because of their large and intimidating nature I chose not to participate. People on this floor tended to be with friends and played nonchalantly at the various machines. I decided to try my hand at some of the fighting games I was more familiar with and was delighted to have my posterior cooked up and served to me with a delicious soy glaze. I then tried some games where you play against the computer rather than more Japanese masters and was rewarded in the same fashion. In the world of videogames there are several difficulty settings one can set a game to. It goes like this in ascending order: Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, Apocolypse, Japan. All these machines are of course set to the difficulty of the rising sun. So with my tail between my legs I went up to visit the third, and final, floor.

Third Floor: High Roller Floor
This is where they seperate the men from the boys, the bold from the meek, the drunk from the sober. This is where the big boys play. And so, this floor was just nicer than the other ones and featured exclusively gambling-type games. As you can see there are plush red chairs for those addicted enough to gambling to venture all the way to the third floor. I dared not even look at the prices of these games for fear that money would start to dissolve in my wallet. I walked around taking pictures of several businessmen, and found that literally none of the high rollers looked like they were having a good time. I only took limited pictures because of the territorial looks that I got from this "high rolling" crowd. I suspect that if I lingered up there longer I would have been submitted to some gruesomely overpriced rite of passage ritual, so I left quickly.

Special note: What the hell is this game?
I saw this game at the entrance to the arcade and am still pondering what it is. The title says something about "touching" that I can read in japanese, but other than that this box is a mystery to me. Here's a picture of me giving a discerning look to one of the "controllers." If you have any information about this game, I would love to hear it. Judging by the look of the controller it must be some sort of a cotton candy eating simulator. I have no idea. Well, I hope you liked this post and I'll be sure to send out another after the weekend.
Sayonara.

Fat Bankers and Little Men

This past Thursday and Friday I was lucky enough to be able to go on another commercial shoot. This time the spots (commercials (in fancy cool-guy advertising speak)) that we were shooting were for a company called JJ Loan. It is not a very well known loan agency and their aim for their new commercial campaign was to make an image that is easily recognizable to the public. And thus, their campaign was centered around one man and the fact that he has a large, smiling banker on his back at all times. The basic idea behind the image was that this man, let's call him Jean Queue Publique, who had just taken out a loan, was constantly burdened by the thought of his contract. This manifested itself as a literal banker riding him all over the place. Here is a picture of the banker sitting opposite his unlucky co-star. Little did you know directly after this picture was taken the banker climbed over the desk and mounted Jean like a rented mule. The contents of the commercials ranged from the banker asking for a little cash when Jean got money out from the ATM, to the banker sneaking a bite out of Jean's toast at breakfast. One of the highlights of the shoot was when Jean sits down to read the paper, in the morning, and sees that interest rates are rising. This prompts a small man (midget) in a banker's outfit to run in the door and leap onto the large banker's back who is currently on Jean's back as well. The little man definitely didn't have the ups to make it onto the banker's back unaided, so they set up a small table with a trampoline stationed just after the end so that the small banker could spring onto the larger banker. (Here is a picture of our wee banker poised and ready to act.) If that were not excellent enough, this action had to be repeated several times in order to get the right shot. So, in essence, I was lucky enough to witness a midget vault repeatedly onto a fat man's back, solely for the sake of future profit. Now there's a sentence you'd only expected to hear in the circus, or possibly some seedy night club.
Despite the fat men, midgets and slapstick, the shoot was still a little long for my taste. As I said, it was filmed over the course of 2 days, each day the cast and crew had to arrive to set up at 8:00 AM. The time doesn't sound too bad, but considering that I had to travel about an hour and a half by train to places I'd never been to was not too easy. The real rub, though, was the length of the shoots. Multiple takes of every shot and time-consuming setup caused the shoots to run until 12:00 to 1:00 in the AM respectively. Luckily, I was able to leave around 10:30 PM both nights because I had to catch the last train; but two full days of standing up in crowded, swelteringly hot sets was more than enough to wear me out. The really cool part was that over the course of only two days, we filmed enough material for 5 commercials.
One of the best parts was getting to talk to everyone involved in the shoot. I was able to gain insight from the production crew as well as the agency and creative minds who came up with the commercials. Luckily, the director, as well as the agency representatives, spoke english, so I was able to have even my most intern-ish questions answered.
In the end, the shoot was an amazing experience, and I gained a lot of valuable, and hands-on insight into the processes behind filming. Thanks again for all the feedback and I'll be sure to update more quickly next time, seeing as I'm back in the office.