Japanese Pop Culture

It is almost impossible to avoid Japanese pop culture. It's everywhere (a good amount of it makes it overseas too), and because of this, I feel that for most people Japanese Pop Culture is a "gateway drug" of sorts that gets foreigners interested in Japanese Culture as a whole. It certainly was that way for me (and judging by the other international students I've talked to here), the same can be said for a lot of us.

I was out a few weeks ago with a relatively new friend of mine. We went to a CD store, and while we were in there she was telling me all about her obsession with Japanese Dramas and J-pop. Then she turned to me and said "So what's your sort-of embarrassing Japanese thing that you like? C'mon, everybody's got one."

Well, mine would probably have to be video games. I've loved them ever since I was little, even though I didn't get into Japanese ones (like Nintendo) until I was a bit older. My video game interests run about 50/50 in regards to western and Japanese games, so I've always enjoyed playing both and spotting the differences in game design and focus between them.




One thing I immediately noticed upon coming to Japan, however, was the arcades. In America, the arcade is pretty much dead compared to how big it was in the 80's and early 90's. Here, it's also not quite as big as it used to be (arcade popularity in general has tapered off since home consoles were introduced) but it's still somewhat thriving. The picture above is of an arcade game called "Taiko Drum Master" that requires a giant plastic Taiko drum and plenty of room to play, so it's not something that could be done easily on a home console (although I heard there is a version for the PS2 because the arcade game was so popular...). Japanese arcade games also sometimes feature cool little extras that are completely absent in the States, such as being able to download your score using a cell phone bar code. The pictures below were taken outside of an arcade in Osaka, where Sega shows us they are not shy about using their main mascot Sonic to advertise.