I went to Japan to see my favorite Korean girl group. As it turned out, I didn't even see them perform. The fan meeting had been canceled. My girls were back in Korea, and I was stranded in Japan. Suddenly, I had a few days with nowhere to go. Not wanting to just head home, I decided to visit the spots around Odaiba where the group had left their mark—a sort of pilgrimage.

A Japanese fan acted as my guide. We had both lost our chance to see the performance, but walking side-by-side with someone in the same boat wasn't so bad. One of our stops was the Statue of Liberty. Just as we finished taking photos, matching our poses and angles, an announcement came over the speakers: the 'Aqua Symphony' fountain show would begin at noon. It was a new attraction that had opened just six months prior.

To my surprise, the show kicked off with the theme from Dragon Quest. You know that fanfare—majestic yet somehow earnest—that anyone who has played the game knows by heart. A forty-year-old piece of music was playing from a fountain that had only existed for half a year.

What shocked me was the reaction of the fan next to me. She knew the song. She’s the type who only has eyes for her idols; she doesn't play games and barely knows what a "hero" is. Yet, she was humming along, as if she’d known the melody forever. She said, "I don't play games, so I don't know much, but I know Doraque (Dragon Quest)."

The real kicker was the order of the setlist. Dragon Quest played first, followed by the theme from Bayside Shakedown. The game music was placed before the theme of a national drama that shook Japan in the 90s—a song everyone knows.

If this were Korea, it would likely have been the other way around. Or rather, would game music have even made the list at all.

We often say that games are culture. We say it frequently, and with quite a bit of emphasis. But when you think about it, it’s a bit strange. I’ve never seen anyone shout, 'Jazz is music!' If you have to keep loudly asserting something, it usually means it hasn't yet become a matter of course.

Here, no one was shouting. On a regular waterfront where tourists come and go, a six-month-old fountain was nonchalantly playing game music, and someone who didn't play games was humming along. No one called it 'culture,' and that’s exactly why it already was.

It seems that if something stays in one place for about forty years, it just becomes part of the scenery. And so, I, who came on a pilgrimage for my idols, ended up leaving with nothing but thoughts about work.