I live in Japan and work at a University here, it’s a University of Technology, almost all male and almost all interested in robots/electronics and sci-fi movies (Gundam, pla-model etc.) However not one of my students had even heard of Pacific Rim before I told them about it, after showing them the trailer (Japanese Version) they showed some interest, but seriously nobody had heard of it at all. I live in a fairly rural prefecture but we still have a large population (around 800,000) and I didn’t see even one advertisement, poster or other piece of PR outside of the movie theater itself. I went on the opening night to the main movie theater in the prefecture and there were 8 people in the showing. So yeah maybe they covered Tokyo with their tour but it seems like the rest of Japan had no clue. I personally love the film and I really think it IS a great tribute to classic Japanese monster movies but if nobody knows it exists you can’t expect a big opening weekend. So I think whoever was doing PR has some questions to answer.

(World War Z by contrast had regular TV spots posters everywhere and yeah admittedly Brad Pitt can’t of hurt, but the difference in PR was not even close. Again I can only speak for my prefecture here.)