Playing Yakuza 6 and suddenly taken aback to realize the State of Japan – or rather, nation of Japan – has probably recruited at least $50k of lifetime value – maybe more! – out of me from the fact that Sony’s PS4 offered SEGA’s Yakuza Kiwami as their free game one month

Like, first off paying for 0, Kiwami 2, and 6. But also since “walking around, eating a variety of Japanese food and drinking Japanese liquor” is like a central mechanic in the series, I’ve had that on my mind. To start with, I got sushi more often.

And I got to thinking “boy, I like ikura” and then “huh we don’t have much in the local cuisine, given the salmon focus from Oregon to Alaska” and now whatever idle share of my brain is dedicated to how I can match up local resources to Japanese expertise

Gave me a better sense of ramen varieties that I bothered to order from the ramenya again after my first try was disappointingly pork-fatty. Tried the slightly-more-sophisticated-than-college packaged ramen from the convenience store. Was nice, but I thought “man I wish they sold surimi and dehydrated add-ins, though!”

They made Japanese whiskey look intriguing, tried it, and I like the light golden taste. Suntori Toki and Hatozaki are now regulars in my cabinet.

I’m not coming in as a novice. For a decade I’ve had a certificate from the Japanese state department I got by paying them to take the hardest test of my life saying I’m somewhat competent in Japanese, which I learned in a program that America uses to train spies and diplomats. I have years ago looked into how the local consulate could help with my dream of retiring to a mountainside hot spring and establishing an onsen ryokan.

So I was primed. But part of that was, I already had a latent base-level familiarity and I’ve been astounded how well this series activated it.

Like, all the faces and the types I had got just enough glancing exposure to from a childhood of Lupin III and Capcom games and Time articles about the salaryman as modern samurai, not only realized in better depth but situated in a matrix where you see how they all fit with and relate to everything else I’ve seen of Japanese culture.

And the way I could pick up things from it and apply it back to what I knew before, like oh, shit, those anime mooks were Korean-coded, huh?

The way the series covers like 30 years’ development of Tokyo (and what went before, with their Golden Gai-alike) and Osaka, and early modern rust belt Hiroshima and semitropical possession Okinawa, helping put together the pieces of Japanese geography and history and culture

(Like, the side missions in 6’s backwater Hiroshima underline how slice-of-life tropes AND pop-mystical youth tropes – “time leaps”, ghosts, “we hit our heads now we switched bodies” – are flip sides of the issue that nothing really happens there compared to the big cities)

The language – just hearing the rhythm of it. I’ve developed an instinctive sense of the uses of makaseru. The way the subtitles help me pick up things where I already know 70% of the words they’re just so fast, the bits where I actually understand every word but I’ve got to parse how the laconic yakuza speech means what the subtitles indicate.

It’s rekindled a flame! From since I was young and my parents’ old neighbor Mr. Tamura, since recalled to home office, visited on business trips. It’s given me a glimpse at the more textured understanding I didn’t even realize I wanted.

A funny thing is amidst all the walking simulators and woke checklists (Depression Quest was MAYBE the third best Twine of its era about chronic depression) of 2010s vidya criticism is AAA games have taken the place of movies as widely shared narrative experiences and have been doing interesting things!

Part of it they learned how to leverage them to promote other properties. The Arkham series got you caring about the whole Bat-collective! “Oh, Nightwing, the butt model with the sticks?” Well, yes, but also the guy who can rival Bruce but isn’t gloomy and can give him hilarious shit about it!

And that works for whole nations, too. Like on the one hand okay Poland is “illiberal” and “a challenge to the human rights foundation on which post-60s first world international relations have been based” but on the other