The T-Files


Mon, 17 Jul 2006

Tsutaya Discas

I just joined Tsutaya Discas, which seems to be Japan's equivalent to Netflix (although it is still not nearly as popular). The business model seems to be the same: For a fixed monthly fee of about 2000 yen you can build a queue of DVD that you want to rent, they send them to you two at a time by mail, you can keep them as long as you want, then send them back by dropping them into the mailbox, and they send you the next two. Here is the list I wrote down beforehand:

  1. Hollywood Ending
  2. Do the Right Thing
  3. Bottle Rocket
  4. Flirting with Disaster
  5. Jersey Girl
  6. Crying Game
  7. The Big Lebowsky
  8. Donnie Darko
  9. The Fisher King
  10. Brazil

Finding these on the Discas web site was a little tricky, because the title search does not work with the original titles, and the Japanese titles are often completely different. Fortunately, you can also search by actors or directors (most of the time even in English). I am also happy to report that nine of my ten titles were available: I just had to replace Flirting with Disaster with Huckabees and move Hollywood Ending down the queue because it is currently in high demand (or low availability).