RFID in Japan

Since it seems easy to find stories about good experiences with great new technologies. I am inclined to report something different.

This morning, I found that Spiderman 3 is already out in Japan, so I looked for theaters near my place. There you go, Shinjuku Wald 9. As they have an RFID-based ticketing system, I decided to use it for the first time. I should be able to make a seat reservation on a website and use my (RIFD-chipped) phone as a movie ticket. That would be cool.

The first step was to create my account with the service, called KINEZO. This was pretty easy and it took about 2:30 min to enter my personal info. Then I was ready to make a reservation on the website. The earliest one started around noon. I clicked on a seat that looked available and then after a few clicks, it says there are no seats available. What? I did the same with the ones starting at different times, and after many clicks, it repeatedly said "there are no seats available." It took about 5 minutes to find a seat for the one starting at 4:30pm. I could have done this quicker, but, okay, 5 min isn't too bad. Click, click, and I got an SMS message on my phone with the link to make a payment. It said that I had to make the payment by 3:30pm, but I read 4:30pm. Also, I thought I would be able to pay at the movie theater by just touching a gate machine, so I decided to ignore the payment link.

I set my alarm on my phone at 3:55pm. But I left at 3:45pm, before the alarm rang, because I wanted to get there a bit earlier. Just to be safe. On the way to the theater, I remembered something about my phone and was concerned about it. About a week ago, I was about to get on a train, but changed my mind. As I used my phone as a train ticket, I had to talk with the service person to undo my getting into the platform. He said that they were unable to undo it and I had to go to some other station to do so, where they have the right equipment. Without fixing this problemI could not use my phone as a train ticket. So, I thought I might not be able to use my phone as a movie ticket until I fix it.

I was pretty sure that I can fix this at JR Shinjuku station, since it is one of the largest train stations. A bit of detour, but no big deal. I was right. They fixed it for me in a second and I got to the theater at around 4:25. I just remembered about the payment and clicked the payment link on the escalator up to the theater. What? I cannot make the payment?? It doesn't sound too good. But let's just talk to someone at the ticket office... If I get mad enough they may give me a ticket?? (That's absolutely not the case in Japan.)

There was a line at the ticket office. But, I only had to wait for 2:30 minutes and it took about 1 minute to talk with the ticket sales person. It must have been faster this way, without using the RFID-based ticket system. Anyway, my reservation was of course automatically cancelled and Spiderman 3 was all full. They said I had to wait at least for two hours. So, I decided not to see the movie this time.