Since moving to Japan, I’ve hardly seen any movies at theatres. Going to theatres happened more often in my first couple of years when I was still in Aichi, where most of my language school friends were because that’s what students do, right? Karaoke, movie, picnic, sports, repeat.
But to be honest, even when I was Singapore, I wasn’t such a huge movie fan. However, trips to the cinema grew even less when I started working at a post-production company doing broadcasting compliance. Because my work revolved around watching TV 8-12 hours a day, every day of the week, watching movies were no longer much of a break for me. In fact, the job caused me to be unable to enjoy movies as my reflex was to pause the show when I see or hear something non-compliant to regional broadcasting standards.
Regardless, the biggest reason for my very few trips to the theatre is because of the price here in Japan. Granted, depending on the day, time, and region, there are some discounts to movie tickets where you can get tickets for just 1,000 yen. Yes, you heard me: just 1,000 yen, because regular tickets are 1,800 yen. That’s about SGD$22 per movie, and I don’t find it worthwhile to pay that much for movies since I grew up in a country where $10 is more than enough for a show. While I have the privilege of being able to catch countless Japanese films not released overseas now, I do not get to see several Hollywood shows not on screen here. And those that are released here are mostly released some 2-3 months later than the rest of the world. That resulted in me going to the cinema probably only about once every two years now. And because I don’t catch movies alone, as long as people don’t ask me along, I don’t think I will be there again anytime soon.
The good news is, I still keep myself a little bit updated with the latest shows whenever I fly, so I see no reason to go to the cinema as I can catch lots of shows in-flight. That is also one reason Singapore Airlines is awesome.
I used to watch movies a lot when I was in my teens (poly years), like at least once, sometimes twice a week.
Different cinema (Shaw/ Cathay/GV) offer different types- Shaw specialised in Hongkong, Cathay for Korean and GV offered Japanese latest…
Now they serve almost the same.
Every CNY is a sorta “Super peak” season for Singaporeans to watch movies, since there usually aren’t a lot of activities ard and everyone’s free.
But this year’s offer was among the worst. Can you imagine Liang Xi Mei ‘s slapstick comedy was shown in almost all theatres and occupied the most time slots? It’s the same case for blockbuster “Black panther “, leaving the audience with no choice.
It’s really a sad situation now for the movie enthusiasts.
Wow, that’s a lot of movies. Here, it’s so expensive, most people I know rent DVDs instead. I didn’t know Shaw has more Hong Kong shows, and Cathay and GV have more Korean and Japanese movies respectively. I used to go Cathay Cineplex at Dhoby Ghaut a lot because of their art shows that are usually not shown elsewhere.
My impression of CNY movies are either Jack Neo or some Journey to the West shows so I don’t really expect too many varieties. Did you catch either of Liang Ximei or Black Panther?
Neither, I watched some journey to the west movie. -_-
Just saw your new post on Dirty shoes- congrats on finding your Ms Right 🙂
Though I have a suspicion that she might b one of the two ladies who always comment? Or are they actually the same person?
LOL, Journey to the West is the winner for CNY.
Which two ladies?
I can’t remember clearly leh… but, I’m not gonna search since she’s gg to debut soon. I’ll just sit back n wait.
Btw, do u use Twitter? Cos I saw 1 with the same link. If it’s your photo, tt means I can finally put a face to your writing.;)
Lol, she has very rarely changed her name when posting comments and even when she did, she uses the same account showing the same avatar, so I don’t think the two ladies you’re thinking of are the same person.
If you mean the account with hardly any tweets and hardly any followers where the twitter handle is @gaijinhan, then yes, that’s me! I set up the account to provide more up-to-date news on the nuclear reactor disaster back in 2011 but don’t use it much now.