This can be seen in perhaps their most famous cultural export to the world, a beast we know of as Godzilla, though when they anglicize it, they write it as "Gojira."
If I am going to extrapolate from that, I'd figure that their preference is to use an R over an L. It's the same sound anyway, so you'd think they'd choose one and just have it be the default.
But lo and behold, when I was checking out the movie times at Kyoto's Toho Cinemas Nijo, I saw the title for the new Star Wars movie listed as follows:
The Mandalorian and Glogoo.
The stranger thing was, right below that, the correct title was written out.
Don't believe me? Here:
By the way, tomorrow I'm going to see Super Beaver Live and Documentary.
Even if I'm willing to shrug off the explanation for the L appearing instead of the R, what's the deal with the "oo" instead of the "u?"
Anyway, I just found that interesting.
My date with a movie when on holiday was an easy choice this trip, considering that the 12th live action Star Wars movie actually released on the very day I saw it, Friday, a day after it released back in Australia, and a bit before the U.S. release by time zones. I was probably especially driven to get this one in after I never got to go see One Battle After Another in Greece last year, and just to make sure there were no shenanigans, I went the very first day. (My wife? She's at a conference during the day, which is one of the reasons we're here.)
In fact, I even had a perfectly appropriate shirt to wear to the movie, which I actually got in Europe last year:
Which is further appropriate because "sensei" is one of the words I've gotten to in my very slowly paced Duolingo lessons -- too slowly, really, to be of any use on this trip.
I'm not going to review the movie for you. Not in this post, anyway. I will be reviewing it for ReelGood, so there will be a link up to the right in a couple days -- or already now, depending on when you're reading this. (Or possibly ten years ago, depending on when you're reading this.)
But I did want to "review" the experience of going to the movies in Japan -- and by that I really just mean tell you about it.
For starters I should say that I was careful to choose the subtitled version of the movie. The website is good about distinguishing, which I would not say is a given in what I've experienced of Japan so far. The word "impenetrable" has been used among my wife and me in relation to certain logistics, let's just say that. Until the film actually started, I didn't feel 100% certain I hadn't messed it up.
The cinema itself was nothing too unusual. I ended up opting for just popcorn and a drink, but it did come with a plastic carrying tray that helps hold it in your seat:
I considered for a second something more adventurous, but I wasn't very far removed, time-wise, from having gotten at the market a chicken skewer with caviar eggs on it. So the memory of that kind of squelched any ambitions in that regard. It did have caramel seasoning on top.
While we're on the topic of the popcorn, I'll skip ahead to the end of the movie and mention how carefully the Japanese sort their trash. The plastic lid and straw went in one bin, the paper in another, food waste in a third (I had none of this myself), and of course finally the plastic trays in their own rack to be washed and reused. I'm sure some dumb tourists don't discriminate, but all the Japanese were doing it and I certainly didn't want to be "that guy." (Also, I suspect it's at least somewhat unusual for tourists to go to the movies on holiday. Only crazy people like me.)
The other thing I grabbed going on was one of these:
They had them handily organized so you knew which ones were for boys and which for girls. (The lighting is bad, but I can assure you those are pink.)
I wasn't sure if they would be needed for comfort. I didn't find my seat to be significantly different from other cinema seats, so I didn't use mine. (That didn't mean I was comfortable as such. I couldn't really find the right position and there was no good place to put my foot.) Maybe they were meant to be boosters? Which I certainly didn't need, being 6' 4."
The pre-show is the real place you observe cultural differences in the moviegoing experience. There were some ads, but in general the content was more focused on movies. Before the proper trailers started, there was a hosted section, sort of like a movie news with a pretty young woman. This included such bits as Shawn Levy introducing Ryan Gosling as part of the cast of Star Wars: Starfighter, possibly at Comic-Con, that sort of thing.
The actual trailers were mostly English with subtitles, but both the Toy Story 5 trailer and the Moana trailer were dubbed. And one interesting thing to note was that you got a lot more of them, but they were shorter, some of them no longer than 45 seconds. (Side note: Do we need the live action Moana already? Moana 2 only came out in 2024. Anyway it's a lot of Moana for a ten-year period.)
In general these trailers conformed to some of the funnier presentations you see in movies and TV of the Japanese doing American culture. The VO guy would be speaking a steady stream of Japanese and then scream out "Masters of the Universe!" (Oh yeah, a bunch of films that are already out in Australia haven't come out here yet, such as the aforementioned Masters of the Universe, Mortal Kombat 2 and Michael.)
In the movie itself, the only thing I wanted to comment on that isn't substantively about the movie was the perfectness of the Japanese subtitles for this movie in particular. Because the title character is sort of a samurai figure, who talks about ancient codes ("The Way"), and his adopted child is an Eastern religion style figure of supernatural power, the Japanese subtitles almost felt like accompanying art.
My last strange impression? It was pretty strange indeed.
When the credits rolled, I turned on my phone, as I am accustomed to doing when credits roll. I was sitting closer to the screen than most people, as I am also accustomed to doing, so I just assumed everyone behind me was filing out.
But when the lights finally came up at the end, only then did the rest of the people get up and leave. Just from my memory of how many people I'd noticed sitting behind me, not more than ten percent of those people could have filed out before the credits finished.
In the U.S., this number would be almost one hundred. An impatient lot, us Americans. Only for MCU movies is this not the case, but even with the same parent company, I don't think anyone was expecting The Mandalorian and Grogu to have a mid-credits sequence. They just stayed for politeness and decorum.
A politeness and decorum I'm hoping I didn't upend by jumping on my phone while the movie was technically still going.
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