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:
- Hollywood Ending
- Do the Right Thing
- Bottle Rocket
- Flirting with Disaster
- Jersey Girl
- Crying Game
- The Big Lebowsky
- Donnie Darko
- The Fisher King
- 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).



