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WSj: Japan Wants Tourists, Except Those in Mario Costumes Driving Go-Karts

T

Tripon

Member
TOKYO—On their recent honeymoon in Japan, Jason and Nicole Francis savored the temples of the ancient capital of Kyoto and unwound at a resort with a private hot spring. Later they dressed up as a lime-green dinosaur and an Italian plumber and sped through the streets of Tokyo in go-karts.

“I picked Yoshi because I always pick Yoshi in the game,” said Mr. Francis, a 35-year-old emergency-services worker in New Jersey, explaining his decision to don the dinosaur costume.
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The game is Mario Kart, a racing challenge from Japan’s Nintendo Co. , introduced a quarter-century ago and now played on videogame consoles globally. A new business here takes advantage of Mario Kart’s popularity and loose regulations on go-karts to offer self-driving tours of Tokyo and other cities, with costumes of characters from the game provided. The company, MariCar, says it books thousands of trips a month and most of the customers are non-Japanese.

It’s part of a tourism boom that is changing the face of the world’s third-largest economy. Many businesses are selling a slice of what foreigners perceive as authentically Japanese. But while visitors are enjoying thrill rides in city streets, plucking off cherry-blossom branches for souvenirs and taking selfies in rented polyester kimonos, some locals are not amused.
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FMKTpil.jpg


Groups of MariCar drivers have become a common sight in downtown Tokyo, zipping through the shopping district of Shibuya or across Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo Bay. U.S. military personnel based in Japan are among the customers. Videos of MariCar riders spotted in Tokyo have been posted online by visiting celebrities Kim Kardashian and Hugh Jackman.
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Meanwhile, the company is battling a lawsuit by Nintendo accusing MariCar of copyright infringement. MariCar, which opened its first branch in Tokyo early last year, says it obtained an understanding from the videogame giant before launch. Nintendo declined to comment beyond its initial statement announcing the lawsuit, which called for a ban on the service and damages. The two sides made opening arguments in court in April.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-...in-mario-costumes-driving-go-karts-1498057258
 
T

Tripon

Member
Saucycarpdog said:
I don't blame them but Maid Cafes are infinitely more cringey than this and those are everywhere.
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You're not hurting anybody by visiting a maid cafe and the maids are there to do their job and provide a service.

These go karts on regular surface streets are a safety issue. You don't even to wear a seat belt in order to drive one.
 
T

TsuWave

Member
I'd imagine if you're trying to get to work it would be infuriating to see some dickheads in silly costumes driving karts in traffic
 
K

Käebi

Member
Yeah, all the japanese tourists here always complain about this while visiting Germany to drink beer and wear Lederhosen.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Tripon said:
You're not hurting anybody by visiting a maid cafe and the maids are there to do their job and provide a service.

These go karts on regular surface streets are a safety issue. You don't even to wear a seat belt in order to drive one.
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You don't think they're legal to drive on roads? Surely the government would have shut them down by now. I'm surprised they're still able to use Nintendo outfits if they haven't licensed them though

And by 'Japan doesn't want them' they mean 'Nintendo doesn't want them'?
 
M

Mik2121

Member
I can see the problem, but maybe do something about your regulations?
BTW, there is one of these MariCar things about 2 minutes by walk from my house and they are always busy it seems. I live on a main street in Osaka that goes from the center of the city to the port and there's never traffic with normal cars, just early morning traffic packed with trucks. I would be scared to hell of driving near a massive truck.
 
W

wrowa

Member
Driving a go kart through busy city traffic sounds like an utter nightmare.

(I kinda love how shamelessly MariCar borrows its name from Mario Kart.)
 
M

Maxinas

Member
Saucycarpdog said:
I don't blame them but Maid Cafes are infinitely more cringey than this and those are everywhere.
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Cringe is such a misused word these days. It's not bad at all, just a little bit of fun imho. I guess if you aren't a charismatic person, it be a huge turn off.
 
ranmafan

ranmafan

Member
KillGore said:
Yep. In fact, in the 5 weeks I stayed in Japan, I didn't see any insane traffic. Most people just use trains.
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You would be surprised how much insane traffic there is here, especially Tokyo at times. I drive here in Japan everyday, and while I don't live in Tokyo, I have driven through there and Yokohama many many times, and it can be very hard to drive through there. While trains remain the main mode of travel for people there, more people have cars here than you can imagine. And even in my area of the country where a car is a requirement, traffic can be a huge problem.

Saying all that, I completely understand the frustrations with this. Considering the already difficult hassles of driving in Japan, such as confusing roads, short lanes, crazy drivers, and other bad issues, the last thing I want to see are people driving go karts on the roads causing a scene or a havoc. It's distracting and potentially dangerous in my opinion. Especially when you get people here driving them that don't know the driving rules here. As a driver here I won't be sad to see them go. I already have to deal with the insane motercycle gangs daily, I don't want go have to deal with people trying to fulfil their crazy Mario kart fantasys on the road.
 
coughlanio

coughlanio

Member
ranmafan said:
You would be surprised how much insane traffic there is here, especially Tokyo at times. I drive here in Japan everyday, and while I don't live in Tokyo, I have driven through there and Yokohama many many times, and it can be very hard to drive through there. While trains remain the main mode of travel for people there, more people have cars here than you can imagine. And even in my area of the country where a car is a requirement, traffic can be a huge problem.

Saying all that, I completely understand the frustrations with this. Considering the already difficult hassles of driving in Japan, such as confusing roads, short lanes, crazy drivers, and other bad issues, the last thing I want to see are people driving go karts on the roads causing a scene or a havoc. It's distracting and potentially dangerous in my opinion. Especially when you get people here driving them that don't know the driving rules here. As a driver here I won't be sad to see them go. I already have to deal with the insane motercycle gangs daily, I don't want go have to deal with people trying to fulfil their crazy Mario kart fantasys on the road.
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Not to mention there's plenty of Go-kart tracks in and around Tokyo that could play host to this kind of service.
 
J

Jubern

Member
For those wondering, the karts actuality do have seat belts and are legally cleared to run on a normal way.
 
M

MutFox

Banned
I just go-karted through Tokyo recently.
The group I was with had several drivers who were pretty reckless.
 
K

Kyolux

Member
Poketune said:
I'm genuinely curious, what goes on in a maid cafe?
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You get served cute food where the maid will write with ketchup on it, cast a "spell" on it. Watch the maids sing a song and pay a lot of money for a meh meal.

Nothing lewd going on in there.
 
S

SephLuis

Member
ranmafan said:
You would be surprised how much insane traffic there is here, especially Tokyo at times. I drive here in Japan everyday, and while I don't live in Tokyo, I have driven through there and Yokohama many many times, and it can be very hard to drive through there. While trains remain the main mode of travel for people there, more people have cars here than you can imagine. And even in my area of the country where a car is a requirement, traffic can be a huge problem.

Saying all that, I completely understand the frustrations with this. Considering the already difficult hassles of driving in Japan, such as confusing roads, short lanes, crazy drivers, and other bad issues, the last thing I want to see are people driving go karts on the roads causing a scene or a havoc. It's distracting and potentially dangerous in my opinion. Especially when you get people here driving them that don't know the driving rules here. As a driver here I won't be sad to see them go. I already have to deal with the insane motercycle gangs daily, I don't want go have to deal with people trying to fulfil their crazy Mario kart fantasys on the road.
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I think it's a question of when rather than if someone will have an accident on the road because of those go karts.

I have been to Tokyo and since Japan laws about traffic are very different from here, I got easily got confused about where the cars where coming from and where they were going. And I was a pedestrian in this case. Can't imagine how it would go if I tried to take the wheel in there.

If those go karts were here, I would give one week, tops, before some shit happened.
 
ranmafan

ranmafan

Member
SephLuis said:
I think it's a question of when rather than if someone will have an accident on the road because of those go karts.

I have been to Tokyo and since Japan laws about traffic are very different from here, I got easily got confused about where the cars where coming from and where they were going. And I was a pedestrian in this case. Can't imagine how it would go if I tried to take the wheel in there.

If those go karts were here, I would give one week, tops, before some shit happened.
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Exactly and from what I've seen on the news there have been indeed accidents that have have occurred. Driving here can be quite hard and with distractions like these make it much much worse. It's hard enough trying to be careful avoiding bicycle traffic, or the influx of older drivers making lots of mistakes (a big problem here as of late) or the motercycle gangs. Add in the Mario kart thing and it just makes things worse. For me the whole Nintendo trademark stuff is an issue for sure, but I certainly don't want to see them in the roads because of the safety issue. As someone who drives with two young kids, I don't ever want to get in an accident because of something like this.

I say get them off the roads and on to go kart racetracks instead.
 
M

Moor-Angol

Banned
KillGore said:
Yep. In fact, in the 5 weeks I stayed in Japan, I didn't see any insane traffic. Most people just use trains.
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If you go Akihabara, Asakusa, Ueno, Shinjuku, of course traffic is not heavy.
Go outside the Yamanote ring (or Greater Tokyo, or Inner Tokyo) and you will see what means living in a 20mln populated area...

Last weekend I moved to Saitama City, 25 Km from Ikebukuro where I lived before.
It takes more than 1 hour and this was during weekend...
 
M

Moor-Angol

Banned
SephLuis said:
I have been to Tokyo and since Japan laws about traffic are very different from here, I got easily got confused about where the cars where coming from and where they were going. And I was a pedestrian in this case. Can't imagine how it would go if I tried to take the wheel in there.

If those go karts were here, I would give one week, tops, before some shit happened.
Click to expand...



Japan, as England, uses left way driving, and people also walk in the street in the same way; it was hard for me also to get used to it back then in 2003 when I first came here.

The problem about karts is that they are smaller than a car, you can't see them from a rearview mirror if one of them is close to you.
Also they don't have stop lights, so what if one ahead of you stops suddendly ?
They don't have mirrors, turning lights, so every change of directions they make is impossible to understand from a normal car.
There are some reasons why karts can be drived on circuits and not on normale streets, and above I wrote some of the reasons.
 
FingerBang

FingerBang

Member
I live in Tokyo and I see them every once in a while. It's a bunch of foreigners acting like foreigners with their foreign idea of Japan that annoys foreigners who live in Japan and makes Japanese people think "OH, FOREIGNERS. WHAT AMAZING CREATURES".

They don't do anything bad, but I don't see the fun in it. They run one behind another and can't really throw blue shells at N1 so...

Edit:

DEEP SHAME ON PEOPLE GOING TO MAID CAFES!

Also, we need a topic where someone explains all the various places Japanese people go to talk to girls. Maid Cafes are just the tip of the iceberg.
 
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