Things Are Looking Up

Check out this huge Sega logo stretched across the ceiling in Sega World Funabori. Funabori is a seriously old-school Sega: a large out-of-town premises with colourful, family-fishing Sonic signage and top-floor karaoke.

A large mezzanine landing hangs over the downstairs cranes and medal games. It’s big enough for a couple of rows of maimai music games front-to-front in concentric curves and a sweeping, glossy service counter beside the saloon doors to the Karaoke stairs. The rest is a broad lobby the likes of which could never exist in a cramped, fortune-per-square-foot city-centre arcade.

The ceiling holds a metal grill in a chrome panel circumference of several metres and this is what hangs the enormous Sega sign – a spectacular sight. However, since it covers the landing right in front of the service desk and with no other customers around, it was tricky to photograph. (Photography not being permitted in Japanese arcades.) Hence the wacky angle.