Makuhari Sega at Dusk

Tokyo doesn’t have suburbs. It’s all urbs. This one is Makuhari, where the Tokyo Game Show plays in the Makuhari Messe.

90s game mags returned by ship from this fabled land and told of golden treasure.

Late one summer, during a long dusk, gold-seekers breeze out of the Game Show, homeward on aching legs. But one of them won’t go home.

His phone’s on five percent; his feet are on four. He’s searching for Sega.

——

In a big part of the big city, this would be a glitzy mall with all the most modern money-suckers, humming together in the honey-harmonies of commerce.

Out here in the urbs, it’s a little follow-along shopping centre with a third-tier fast-food burger bar, a sun-dried pharmacy, a no-brand supermarket with racks of fogey-size shirts, and a righteous, beautiful Sega in red, white and blue.

It’s a proud arcade, but smaller than its roof-tall sign. Some schoolkids – here to change bus – are working on their maimai routines in their blue-shirt-grey-trousers.

There’s an Astro City with a match-three. I rest my feet and the sun turns gold as I play.