Went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince the day it came out. It ended up being quite an ordeal. There are 4 theaters in the Kofu area. The two nice ones, Grand Park and Cinema 5 were only showing the film around 5pm or 8pm, with nothing in between. I wouldn't be able to make a 5pm showing due to work and because the movie is about 2.5 hours long, if I went to an 8pm showing, I would miss the last train home. However, there are 2 smaller theaters on Orion Street, the Kofu Central Theater and the 1.2.3.4 Theater, and the Central theater had a 6:35 showing that worked perfectly for me.

My plan was to get into Kofu around 5:30, grab dinner, and then see the movie. I would meet up with Mig and Katrina at the theater. However, I got into Kofu at 5:30 and spent the next hour trying to find the stupid place! I had a map, but must have been reading it wrong. I was able to find the 1.2.3.4 Theater, but not the Central theater, even though the map shows it as being only a block away from the 1.2.3.4 place.

Anyway, while I was standing around looking lost, two rather attractive Japanese guys came up to see if I needed any help. They appeared to be working at the time as they were wearing restaurant uniforms and had little fliers to pass out, but offered to walk me to the theater. Only problem was that they took me to the 1.2.3.4 theater, which I had already managed to find. As we were standing around in front of that theater, one of them busted out his cell phone to try and figure out where the place was, and the other one just chilled and tried to talk with me. As we were talking he suddenly shouted, "There it is!" The Central theater was pretty much 20 steps down an alley that was in front of the 1.2.3.4 theater. In our defense, it seriously lacked signage.

I thanked the two guys and headed in to get my tickets only to find out that while the other showings that day were in English with Japanese subs, the 6:35 showing would be dubbed, of course, in Japanese. By this time it was already almost 6:30 and I had already spent so much time finding the theater that I just got a ticket. I didn't really want to watch the movie in Japanese, but I guess if there was one movie I wouldn't have trouble understanding, it would be this one. Plus it was either watch it in Japanese or watch it in a week or two once I had the time. But by then I would have run across all the spoilers and it wouldn't be as much fun as watching it on release day.

Mig and Katrina also decided to watch it. The theater is really small and got a bit uncomfortably hot. I was really disappointed by that because I usually end up freezing when I go to the movies and was sort of looking forward to the freezing bit due to having run around in the crazy heat while finding the theater. Anyway, the movie was a bit lackluster. I even got a little bit sleepy in the middle of it but I'm not sure if it was because the movie was boring, because it was in Japanese and I didn't 100% understand what was going on, or if it was because of the heat. The Half Blood Prince wasn't my favorite of the books either, so I guess its no surprise that the movie wasn't all that thrilling for me. Still, I'm glad I got the chance to watch it and now I can add another movie to my list of movies watched all in Japanese!

Labels: Kofu, movie