Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Technology

Pokemon Go Fans Hit Japan’s Streets After Itching for Home Debut

  • Location-based game tops download charts after debut
  • Release coincides with start of summer school holidays
Young women play Pokemon Go on a street in Tokyo.

Young women play Pokemon Go on a street in Tokyo.

Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
Updated on

Office workers and children on summer vacation streamed out onto Tokyo’s streets on Friday to play Pokemon Go, after the hit mobile game was released in its home country.

Anticipation had been building for weeks in Japan, the country that gave birth to the franchise two decades ago. The smartphone game, which topped the country’s download charts just like it did on its U.S. debut earlier this month, lets users collect virtual “pocket monsters” scattered throughout the city on a digital map and battle them against each other.