SEEEEGAAAA

That Sega logo does well standing out in this Higashi Shinjuku square. On a standard scraper-stack of tate lightboxes, the blue-and-white dominates, full of meaning. The brand is so clear it’s like this here is the label on the insideout city of Tokyo.

Takes some doing. Even Godzilla can barely get noticed, clearing his throat demonstratively as he rubbernecks over a cinema. Seriously, he’s actually there, out of shot, nine floors tall, gurning down from the Toho multiplex.

Flame-roar drowned out by the mutters of an out-of-place plaza in narrow Shinjuku. Cheap small-chain restaurants that couldn’t make the strip and chance-it tech shops like the one I cycled out for. A wifi rental that needn’t run Japan-level service: foreign owners targeting tourists, with JP arbeiters having to front it for pocket money.

Rare, luxurious open space, deadbeat retail, a million Kabukicho stragglers and their fruitless lifestories (yes, I was there) – and SEGA lights up all of it, drawing eyes 24/7 and beaming people in.

Or maybe that’s in my head. Have I spent too long obsessing over arcades…?

Nah.