RFID in Japan

It worked! But, things were a bit different than I thought.

First, I made a seat reservation on the website. Then, I got an SMS message on my phone. When, I clicked the payment link on my phone the system took the money from my mobile phone's RFID chip (I had to enter my SUICA password in the process). Then I got another SMS message with a 10 digit reservation number.

When I got to the theater complex, I wasn't quite sure what to do. So, I asked a person at the Information Desk, and she said that I had to get a paper ticket using a kiosk terminal. The kiosk terminal didn't seem to have an RFID reader, so I had to type in the 10 digit code as well as the website password. Worked! I finally got a familiar ?paper ticket.

Overall, I didn't think RFID ticketing drastically made the process of going to see a movie easy, in this case. Things could be better. For example, if they had RFID-enabled gates at the theater complex, I could have walked right through into my theater just by presenting my phone to a gate, instead of spending the minute in front of a kiosk terminal. Also, I'd like to use it without making a reservation. I'd like to just walk into whichever theater I want - the system could count the number of the people in the theater and tell which one's full or not.