Pachinko!

Ah, Pachinko…where the Japanese can get a little taste of Vegas just outside of their local train station. The lights flicker, the balls drop and the game begins. What’s Pachinko, you ask? You’ve probably read it once or twice in this journal as one can’t live in Japan without coming across a Pachinko parlor. Pachinko is basically pinball with some Japanese alterations. For one, the pinball aspect is melded with Vegas type slot machines. But whereas pinball promises free balls, Pachinko, like the slot machines, make the alluring promise of cold, hard….umm, not quite cash winnings. Japanese law prohibits balls to be exchanged for money. More on this in a moment. Like both slot and pinball machines, Pachinko games are designed to attract the eye. They are noise and flashy, brightly colored with lights a’blazin’. These machines are showmen, hucksters and they know just the right splash of flair to attract their coin totting customers. The game that now relieves so many adults of their savings was first designed as a game for kids. I wondered after discovering that fact how many college funds have been pumped into Pachinko machines. Pour junior. Ironic, huh? Pachinko, once meant you is now bringing about your educational downfall at the hands of your parents. I’m not really sure why the game didn’t catch on with kids when it was put out in the 1920s (they didn’t even have PONG back then. Gasp!!!) but by the 30s the adults were lapping it up like sweet tasting pineapple/mango juice.

The city of Nagoya has been given the distinguished title as being the place that popularized the game for adults. Although not the lavish places they were today, Pachinko parlors slowly started to rise up across the country as the game started to gain prominence. Pachinko was a way to unwind after the working day, and long before Xboxes, Wiis, Monopoly and Operation these games were mind deviations to the working class. Switch off the brain from the troubles of the everyday, pop in the coins and try to come up with the big payback. But Pachinkomania would almost be extinguished before the fire really got hot by World War II. All parlors across the country were forced to close and many would be destroyed in bombing attacks. Still, the game was popular enough to endure the war and as Japan rebuilt and re-established itself as a country, Pachinko parlors too rebuilt and regained their prior notoriety. As of this writing Pachinko parlors can be found outside of most major train stations in Japan and there are at least one (sometimes what looks to be a good dozen) parlors in every major city. There are two outside of Yagi station alone with a few more farther on up the road. The lights of the parlor have always been my indicator that I am home and often I have followed them, my lighthouse, leading the way towards the familiar. Walking passed and peeking in you see a flash of light and a couple dozen adults pumping coins in slots gazing zombie like at the games, their faces awash in flickering luminance. They are surrounded by the almost ethereal mist created by the cigarette smoke, as Pachinko parlors are a place where people can escape the still rather lax Japanese smoking laws. It is also a place to escape your kids…legal sanctuary. Under law, children are bared from Pachinko parlors. They got plenty of time to be tainted by silver balls when they are older.

Pachinko machine design is very important. The machine after all is a thief and to entice it must be dolled up to look attractive. Ah, the modern day femme-fetal. Though the machines pretty much have the same premise with rapid pay out and normal game modes they are designed to be individualistic, with their own personality and voice. Unlike Western pinball, the Pachinko machine is upright and you sit to play. Metal balls are purchased for various prices with most machines offering 250 balls for Y1000. Players buy metal balls, at 4 yen per ball (250 balls for 1000 yen is the current norm), which are shot into the machine, with the chance of winning more balls. These balls are important as this is what you are trying to win. More balls equals more pay off. In other words, the balls are very like poker chips ready to be cashed in for different prizes or even more balls if the gambling greed comes over you. Because of the law barring cash payouts players can trade in balls for your usual suspects when it comes to carnival game prizes. You got your lighters and your stuffed animal and your cheesy dollar store games. With such things costing less then what it coast you to play it mystifies me why people just don’t go out and buy this stuff. I guess, like those claw type games you find all over the place here, it is the thrill of the playing that causes such financial foolishness. Pachinko does up the ante, though, by offering larger items like bikes, scooters and television sets. Heck, you can even snag yourself a grocery voucher. Now that at least is practical! With 250 balls you might think games can last for hours. Certainly with that man tries at pinball I might be at that machine for days. Pachinko moves pretty rapidly, though, despite the amount of balls whooshing around your machine. Balls are fired onto the board with a throttle controlling fire speed and they then plummet to the bottom of the game. The hope is that they catch on the machine gates which increases your ball pay out. Various rapid modes have their own themes and light patterns and hitting certain gates will allow you access to different modes. The harder the mode the better the pay off. Normal mode will give you a small pay out (1-3 balls) but allows you into the rapid mode game. There more gates on the board will become available and your music and lighting will shift. Here you can enter increasingly more rapid modes of game play with your ball pay out increasing with each advancement. The game is over when the timer runs out.

I know above I mentioned gambling and despite what you and I may consider to be the definition of the word, Pachinko is not actually considered to be all out gambling. Gambling, you see, is illegal in Japan. This may allot for all those Japanese tourists in Vegas. Pachinko is just not taste enough. Basically, if you run a proper parlor you can skitter around the tolerance of the law for such places but it is a very thin line. Parlors can be forced to close-up for good for even the most minor of infractions. Of course where this is gambling there is the mob and it is common knowledge that Pachinko has links to the tattooed men of the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia). There have also been ties to North Korea where the Korean government has been able to acquire funds from Pachinko parlors run by some of the Korean populace in Japan. In 2005 it is believed that up to 10 billion yen was doled out to Korea as dividend from the drug trade and Pachinko parlors. This is a VERY profitable operation.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, for one I thought as my time winds down here I had to at least give Pachinko a bit of a tribute. Secondly, I had been planning to play a game myself this evening…sort of one of the last uniquely Japanese things I would be able to experience. After doing a little research on the game in Internet-land, though, and discovering that I’d be playing for just more junk to stuff in the already full suitcase and the already full suitcases new younger brother the already full Adidas bag, I opted to save my $10. Resisting the urge to gamble is easy when you’re cheap. I will leave myself with just a peak inside the world of Pachinko, me glancing through the windows each day I walk by on the way home, looking through the smoke to see the people all perfectly lined up in front of the color and lights, a bucket of silver balls beside them, hoping that this game is the game that nets them the jackpot.