One of the things I used to love doing as a kid was to go to the movies.
There were 5 movie theaters in the city of Ashikaga back then. Chuou Gekijou aka Chu-geki and Scala-za mainly showed Hollywood films while Plaza and Asashi-za specialized mostly in Japanese films.
Then there was this one theater, the name of which I forget, where they showed what they used to call "Romantic Porno" films (Soft Core Porn, basically) released by one of the major film studios of the time, Nikkatsu.
Everytime I walked by the theater with my mother, we fell silent. We walked pass the theater like it wasn't even there. They had these giant posters featuring naked women in various pornographic (yet romantic) poses with titles like 人催遺?啣−窶吮?ケ窶ーコ窶堋ェ窶堙ィ窶堙個湘ョナス窶 (Someone Else's Wife 2- an affair in the afternoon).
I was a precocious child and even at the age of 6 or 7, I knew exactly what these movies were about. Naturally, I was curious to actually watch one of these films but of course I was just too young to buy a ticket and go inside. I remember every year when my uncle and aunt took me to see the annual firework festival on the banks of Watarase River, on our way home, my aunt would hand my uncle some money and he would disappear into the theater and she and I would walk home without him.
By the time I was in high school and was old enough to REALLY appreciate what the theater had to offer, it was gone.
Remember, this was before Al Gore invented the internet and boys really had to put some effort into obtaining porn.
Once, one of my friends rode his bicycle ALL THE WAY to the next town to buy an adult magazine from a vending machine.
You see, there was this stretch of road among the mountains where a lot of long distance trucks would pass through. Convenience stores were not as ubiquitus as they are today, so there was this spot where they had three vending machines and a rest room for the truck drivers. One of the vending machines sold soft drinks like Coca Colas and canned coffee. Another one sold instant meals like Cup O' Noodles and Udon soups. The other one sold porn. It was a place where these lonley drivers could get some refreshments, a light snack and some reading materials for the rest room.
Anyway, when my friend told us what he had accomplished, it was like we had finally found a way to beat the system! Nowadays, all a kid has to do is turn on the computer, click, and all the porn he wants is waiting for him. No sense of adventure.
I got sidetracked...lol What I was going to write about was how I watched the first Indiana Jones film 8 times in one of those theaters when it first opened in Ashikaga and how excited I was about the new sequal being released this month.
Ashikaga now has a 10 screen cine-plex so I won't have to wait until the roadshow finally makes a stop here 6 months after the release like before.
Oh, one more thing. When they showed Rambo 2 (in which Sly blows up half of Cambodia) as a part of a double-feature at Scala-za, the other film was Killing Field. It's not a joke, I swear!
There were 5 movie theaters in the city of Ashikaga back then. Chuou Gekijou aka Chu-geki and Scala-za mainly showed Hollywood films while Plaza and Asashi-za specialized mostly in Japanese films.
Then there was this one theater, the name of which I forget, where they showed what they used to call "Romantic Porno" films (Soft Core Porn, basically) released by one of the major film studios of the time, Nikkatsu.
Everytime I walked by the theater with my mother, we fell silent. We walked pass the theater like it wasn't even there. They had these giant posters featuring naked women in various pornographic (yet romantic) poses with titles like 人催遺?啣−窶吮?ケ窶ーコ窶堋ェ窶堙ィ窶堙個湘ョナス窶 (Someone Else's Wife 2- an affair in the afternoon).
I was a precocious child and even at the age of 6 or 7, I knew exactly what these movies were about. Naturally, I was curious to actually watch one of these films but of course I was just too young to buy a ticket and go inside. I remember every year when my uncle and aunt took me to see the annual firework festival on the banks of Watarase River, on our way home, my aunt would hand my uncle some money and he would disappear into the theater and she and I would walk home without him.
By the time I was in high school and was old enough to REALLY appreciate what the theater had to offer, it was gone.
Remember, this was before Al Gore invented the internet and boys really had to put some effort into obtaining porn.
Once, one of my friends rode his bicycle ALL THE WAY to the next town to buy an adult magazine from a vending machine.
You see, there was this stretch of road among the mountains where a lot of long distance trucks would pass through. Convenience stores were not as ubiquitus as they are today, so there was this spot where they had three vending machines and a rest room for the truck drivers. One of the vending machines sold soft drinks like Coca Colas and canned coffee. Another one sold instant meals like Cup O' Noodles and Udon soups. The other one sold porn. It was a place where these lonley drivers could get some refreshments, a light snack and some reading materials for the rest room.
Anyway, when my friend told us what he had accomplished, it was like we had finally found a way to beat the system! Nowadays, all a kid has to do is turn on the computer, click, and all the porn he wants is waiting for him. No sense of adventure.
I got sidetracked...lol What I was going to write about was how I watched the first Indiana Jones film 8 times in one of those theaters when it first opened in Ashikaga and how excited I was about the new sequal being released this month.
Ashikaga now has a 10 screen cine-plex so I won't have to wait until the roadshow finally makes a stop here 6 months after the release like before.
Oh, one more thing. When they showed Rambo 2 (in which Sly blows up half of Cambodia) as a part of a double-feature at Scala-za, the other film was Killing Field. It's not a joke, I swear!