Steve was the organizer of our trip to Japan. I had a loose request of animals & coffee but he had spent time researching and pinning maps with secret locations he wanted to see while we were there and every morning there was a surprise of where Steve would have us running off to that day.

   One particular morning, he awoke me with an old tradition of ours, screaming “FISHYYYY WAKE UP,” a line from the movie ’Finding Nemo’, and jumping on my futon while shaking me and throwing me around and ordering me to dress quickly as possible and prepare for a slightly long train ride. 

He refused to tell me our destination this morning, only that the station’s name was Kawasaki. As the train began leaving Tokyo’s city limits I began to notice something I was very surprised by — graffiti. I noticed the platforms we started passing which had become more rough looking and littered with trash. I questioned Steve again where we might be heading but he refused to answer, told me to stop my complaining and he sat there silent with a sly smile, which made me very nervous, because once you get to know Steve, it can be very hard to get him to shut up and silence could only mean mischief. 

We exited the station and I was tired, cranky and annoyed. I had no idea why we were so far out into a city that seemed almost as shady as the darker parts of Shibuya. 

Soon we approached a tall ugly brown building that looked run down and forgotten standing ominously on a street corner by an overpass.

“We’re here!” exclaimed Steve with pride. 

“Where is… here, exactly?” I said, looking up at this strange beat up rust streaked high rise that read, “Amusement Game Park: Kawasaki Warehouse” In big red neon at the top

With his mischief making smile still painting his face, Steve led the way to a steel door tunneled entrance lit with red lines and spray painted with the words, “Kawasaki warehouse” painted on it. I jumped back as the door suddenly slid back revealing dingy neon signs buzzing walls covered in soot and grime. The stink of stale cigarettes hung in the air and as we continued down a narrow dim hallway I really started to get nervous about what kind of adventure Steve was leading me into.  After a short way, before us was an engraved glowing archway that led to a giant vat of glowing green liquid, with only small stepping stones and railings to provide a path across.
I stood still wondering if I had been hit by a truck on our way here and ended up in an isekai, a genre of anime where the main character is transported suddenly into a magic world. 

“I don’t think this is the right way, I see a parking lot on the other side,” said Steve. 

Still reeling from the glowing pit of slime, unable to imagine what the ‘right’ way could possibly look like at this point, I followed him, lamb lost, down another equally terrifying hallway to a set of extremely suspicious banged up elevators.  He pushed me inside and slammed a few buttons and it jerked upward as I said a small prayer, hoping whomever the Japanese god of adventure was might hear me. 

It turns out they did indeed, because as the doors to the elevator opened, I gasped, looking at the incredible scene in front of me. It was the biggest arcade I had seen and it was decorated just like a post apocalyptic cyberpunk Kowloon City walled city. There were two floors designed and fashioned with crumbling walls and strange stands and signs and props everywhere and lighting cast mysterious shadows across the glowing game cabinets. 

There was every game I could imagine there and ones I hadn’t even known could be imagined. 

I was then very grateful Steve had dragged us out at such an early hour, because it was going to take me ages to get through all these games on the first and second floor alone, never mind the rest on the remaining 3 other floors I hadn’t seen yet.

I had never been to a Japanese arcade before this and I felt like a small child once more, holding controllers to a Tetris machine that were as big as my head. For some time I had thought I was fairly good at Tetris, even bragging about ranking in my city’s local leaderboards but I was quickly humbled in Kawasaki. I will not embarrass myself and tell you my score, dear readers, but it was not great, especially coming from a world where an A was the best, and here it was possible to achieve A++. You have not seen real gaming until you step into a Japanese arcade, full of serious faced gamers clad in special gloves to help with speed and friction and unfathomable high scores. 

Steve and I made our way quickly through all the floors, sampling each of what it had to offer and even made our way to the slightly more serious gambling floors with clinking flashing machines full of silver pachinko balls where flustered old men attempted to explain the game to me while I giggled and pressed buttons, not yet knowing more than a few words in Japanese. 

We played everything from rhythm games to fighting games to cabinets of retro games older than we were. It wasn’t until our pockets were painfully empty that we admitted to ourselves it was time to finally leave the mysterious warehouse and return back to the real world. 

This time we braved the stepping stones across the glowing vat of doom, our laughter echoing all over the cavern flooded with red and green light as we skipped over the stones and ran through the portal back to the real world. 

Unfortunately Kawasaki Warehouse closed in 2019 and has not announced any plans of reopening yet. So, Geo Corp., if you’re reading this, please, I never need an excuse to book a plane ticket anyway, bring back my favorite arcade!