Back to the Future: 10 am movie madness!

We celebrated Culture Day by going to see Back to the Future in the theater this morning. That's culture, right? And did you kind of feel like no part of that sentence made sense? We had, um, a sudden change of plans this morning (cough-missedourtrain-cough) and were looking, at 8:30, for something to do. One of the theaters near us plays interesting old (mostly) American movies at 10 am. We've never made it to one, because we always see the listing in the mid-afternoon when we're looking for something to watch in the evening. Not today! I checked the schedule on my phone and saw that it was Back to the Future. Right on! Just the right amount of time to get over there, have another coffee and buy tickets. Which were only 1000 yen, about half the regular price. Bonus.

What time was the train?

I was surprised that the huge theater was packed, and almost the entire crowd was Japanese. (Someone told me later that this movie and Michael J. Fox are hugely popular in Japan.) Nobody budged during the credits, and there was applause when the lights came up. Everyone was disappointingly silent during the movie itself, though. I didn't get the buzzy sense of camaraderie you get from watching a movie with a ton of other fans. I loved seeing it on the big screen anyway.

But it gets better. I checked to see (finally) what this ten o'clock movie thing was about. Turns out, it's part of a nationwide campaign called the "Ten am movie festival" of "50 movies that are great no matter how many times you watch them." How great is that? This has been going on all year. Better to find out late than never, I guess. You can find your local theater in the previous link; this is the list of movies and dates at Roppongi Hills. Each one plays at 10 am every day from Saturday through the following Friday. The list is in Japanese. It's good katakana practice; Next week is Amerikan Gurafiti. When the titles get translated instead of transliterated, it's fun to guess what the original was. The week after next is a good one: Ganbare! beaazu!