One of the things I noticed about Japanese game culture when I was there was the importance of game centers or arcades. I ended up taking a number of pictures at some of the game centers I visited – see Arcade and Pachinko Flickr set. I’ve just found a great MA thesis by Eric Eickhorst on “Game Centers: A Historical and Cultural Analysis of Japan’s Video Amusement Establishments” (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Kansas, 2006). The thesis is a readable work that covers the history, the current state (as of 2006), Japanese attitudes and otaku culture. One interesting statistic he discusses has to do with housewives,
Surprisingly, the number one occupation listed by survey participants was housewife, representing 17.3% of the total number of respondents. This perhaps unexpected result merits a closer examination of the function of game centers for housewives. In response to the question of why they visited game centers, 38.6% of housewives replied that their intent was to change their mood or as a means of killing time, suggesting that such audiences may visit game centers as a way of taking a break from household duties. The function of changing one’s mood or killing time at a game center was the second most common response among all survey respondents, accounting for 32.0% of answers to that question. (p. 51-2)