Japan Pachinko

This isn't a recent story or anything ... but I recently watched a really old movie (the Yakuza with Robert Mitchum) and they had a scene in a Pachinko parlour.

This reminded me of the last time I was in such a place. At that time, I found a very easy way to piss off an entire shop of Japanese salarymen today. Just walk into a Pachinko shop, and promptly knock over a bucket of ~2000 steel balls on the floor...

I was there because I was curious how they actually gamble at the shop. As you know, when you go into a shop you pay money and get a bucket of balls to play on the machines. If you win, you get more balls back.

When you decide you are done, you can exchange the balls for prizes such as phone covers, dolls, toy cars, etc ... AND a SPECIAL PRIZE... In this case, the special prize was simply a toy gold bar...

I noticed everyone that was winning eventually exchanged balls for this ... they would take this special prize to another shop outside of the parlour called a TUC shop...

At the TUC shop they will take the "Special Prize" and exchange it for cash back... the idea is that since the place that pays you money and the parlour are "disconnected" it is technically not gambling....

Anyhow while I was in the shop at Shinjuku, I saw an old lady drop her purse. I rushed over to pick it up for her, but as I was standing back up, I crashed into an employee carrying three buckets of balls... which promptly went flying all over the shop.... after i totally "trashed" the place, and after hearing words such as 貴様はだれ？and ばか外人, I got the hell out of there ....