Japanese Airport: Check In the Passengers

How to play: you are the ground agent at the Experdize Air check-in at Tokyo, and every passenger speaks Japanese — this game teaches the language of boarding a flight and flying on a plane. Passengers file through the stanchion ropes to the one desk, and every check comes up on the panel as a question in Japanese. The terminal stands still while a question is up, so read at your own pace: the level is ten reads, there is no clock to beat, and the record is how long they take you and how many you got right first time. The terminal is built up a level at a time, and every passenger takes their own way through it. At level 1 there is one desk and a roped queue, and every check-in opens with the booking in katakana against the romaji passport — サラ・コール against SARA COLE. Approve a match, turn a mismatch away; the mismatches are near misses built from real katakana confusions (ソ against ン, シ against ツ, a dropped long-vowel bar, a stray dakuten), so the read is the transliteration. Then they ask for a seat — 窓側madogawa the window, 通路側tsūrogawa the aisle, どちらでも either — and answering is picking what they said. Level 2 opens the self check-in kiosks by the doors: some passengers print a boarding pass and pick their seat there, some checked in online and walk straight in. Level 3 brings checked bags and the bag drop — the kiosk prints the bag tag, the scale reads the weight in kanji numerals against 二十三キロまでです, and the キロ counter geminates the way the diner's counters do — ikkiro, rokkiro, hakkiro, jukkiro, and an overweight case is repacked before it goes down the belt, because only a carry-on goes past the desk. Somebody who forgot the kiosk is sent back for a tag. Level 4 turns the body scanner on — ナイフ and ライター are confiscated, 鍵 and 小銭 are legal — and level 5 the X-ray, where 水のペットボトル and スプレー缶 do not fly. Level 6 opens the information booth: people ask the way — 保安検査はどこですか。, 手荷物受取所はどこですか。 — and you tell them where it is; a few are not flying at all and only want arrivals. Level 7 adds the gate podium, where passengers ask 何番ゲートですか and you read the departures board — 大阪行き, ソウル行き — for 二番ゲート, 十二番ゲート or 三十二番ゲート. From level 9 the board shows each flight's status — 定刻, 遅延, 欠航, 搭乗開始, 最終案内 — and passengers ask the booth what it says: a cancellation sends them home, a delay to the seats, a final call has them hurrying. Trolleys, seats, signs, a café and flight screens fill the hall on the way. Wrong answers are taken or answered back, never refused — they cost the streak or a fine, a walk the wrong way or a protest, and the read settles as wrong. The Difficulty row on the setup card decides how much help is written under each line: Beginner adds romaji and English, Intermediate romaji alone, Advanced the characters by themselves. What is spoken out loud is always the Japanese.