An unexpected encounter sends us on a journey to the other side of Japan, and into the past.

Sometimes when nostalgia hits, it hits all the harder because you weren’t expecting it. That was the experience our Japanese-language reporter Takuya Inaba recently had while out for a stroll in Watabori Park, where he came across a snack shop, and standing outside of it was a fondly remembered friend from his childhood.

See, back in the ‘90s, it felt like just about every mid-sized shopping mall had a character-themed popcorn making machine. This one, Ninja Jajamaru, was one of Takuya’s favorites, and getting a freshly made snack from the machine was always a smile-inducing punctuation point of family shopping trips.

These kinds of popcorn machines are few and far between these days, though, and it had probably been well over a decade since Takuya had seen this one from his youth. Smiling at their surprise reunion, Takuya decided to buy some popcorn for old times’ sake. He reached into his wallet, got out a few coins…

…and then got his heart broken when he saw that the coin slot was taped over with an “out of order” notice written on it.

This sudden shutdown of his trip down memory lane only made him all the more eager to take one, though, so Takuya started searching online to see if there are any still functioning Ninja Jajamaru popcorn machines. After sifting through social media posts, he was able to find five sightings with fairly recent posting dates. One of them was in Gunma Prefecture, and all of the remaining four, oddly, were in Niigata Prefecture.

Weighing his options, Takuya came to the conclusion that going to Gunma was too risky. There was only one Ninja Jajamaru there, and what if it had broken down or been removed since he saw the social media post about it? Accounting for those possibilities, going to Niigata really did seem like the more prudent choice.

There was just one problem. Watabori Park, the place where Takuya found the broken popcorn machine? It’s in Tokyo, and Niigata is some 300 kilometers (186 miles) away.

But hey, Japan isn’t just the land of character popcorn machines. It’s the land of bullet trains, too! Instead of going home from the park, Takuya instead made his way to Tokyo Station, and from there hopped on the Shinkansen for Niigata.

The bullet train ride between Tokyo and Niigata stations is around two hours, but adding in the local transfers, and it took Takuya roughly three and a half hours to get from Watabori Park to Higashi Niigata Station, the closest rail stop to the Ninja Jajamaru popcorn machine he was trying to track down.

According to Takuya’s research, the machine was located inside the Cupid Ishiyama shopping center. It’s not a fancy place, but rather a  down-to-earth, high-value spot where local families can get good deals on everyday necessities, the sort of place that leaves them with space in their budget to do things like let their kids play for a bit in the building’s arcade game corner…

…or get some popcorn from a Ninja Jajamaru vending machine!

Takuya could hardly believe his eyes. While the machine he’d seen in Tokyo was exhibiting the weathering from being outside in the elements for who knows how many years, this Ninja Jajamaru was smooth and shiny. Despite having been out of production for a very long time, this unit looked practically brand-new. Even the paint on the ear of corn the ninja holds was clean and vibrant.

To Takuya’s great joy, this pristine condition extended to the internal parts, and this Ninja Jajamaru was fully operational! It was even offering popcorn in two flavors: salt or butter.

Now, hours after he’d originally gotten the urge to, Takuya could finally slide two hundred-yen coins into the slot. After pressing the button to choose his flavor, the same melody he’d heard so many times as a kid began playing from the machine’s speakers, and Jajamaru began chanting his ninja magic incantation of “Oishiku naare, popukoon!” (“Become delicious, popcorn!”).

▼ It’s a very useful spell.

Soon, the music gained the additional percussion accompaniment of the sounds of the popcorn kernels popping, and a delicious aroma began to drift out from the machine.

The cooking process takes about one minute, and when it was done, Takuya excitedly reached out, opened the door, and grabbed his popcorn!

Oh, and if you’re wondering which flavor he chose, salt or butter, the answer is “both,” because you don’t travel a total distance of 640 kilometers (398 miles) and skimp out by just getting one of them.

Peeling back the paper cover/lid, Takuya popped a handful of pieces into his mouth, and they tasted…completely ordinary.

That might sound like he was disappointed, especially since in addition to the 400 yen he’d spent for the two cups of popcorn, he was also spending around 20,000 yen to make the trip to Niigata and back. That works out to roughly 10,200 yen (US$66) per cup of popcorn, so wouldn’t he have wanted it to taste extraordinary?

That’s the thing, though. Takuya hadn’t come all the way here for some avant-garde iconoclastic artisanal popcorn. He’d come here to get a literal taste of his childhood, to be transported, taste buds-first, back to a time when life was so simple that “I went to the mall with my family or friends, and we got some tasty popcorn” was all you needed to say to yourself, “Yep, today was a good day,” and on that front, he was completely satisfied.

There are all sorts of reasons why it’s not as easy to do that once we become adults, not the least of which is growing capable and independent enough that we start to face bigger challenges as the price of our greater freedoms, and also taking on more responsibilities in order to provide those happy little moments for others. Growing up definitely isn’t a bad thing, but there’s nothing wrong with reconnecting with the things that put a smile on your face as a kid to remind you of your core sources of joy.

So yeah, seven hours round-trip might be an epic-length journey for popcorn, but for a trip back to your childhood, it doesn’t feel too far at all.

Location information
Cupid Ishiyama / キューピット石山店
Address: Niigata-ken, Niigata-shi, Higashi-ku, Higashi Nakajima 2-4-1
新潟県新潟市東区東中島２丁目４−１
Open 9 a.m.-10 p.m.
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
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