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» Gambling
Pachinko
At this point I can't recall how much I knew about the "game" going in. We were out on a date and found a countryside pachinko parlour flashing away next to the river, and decided to brave the smoke stink and clatter. We promised a personal limit of 500 yen ($5.00 USD) each.
You put your 500 yen coin (or 1000 yen note) into an arcade-style machine that vends out a small number of metal balls, which you "flush" into the machine again in the hope that they'll fall into little holes, producing more balls. You sell the balls back to the parlour if you've got any at the end of the day. There is much talk about "loose pins" which gives the illusion of control over your balls and the direction of bounce. You can easily spit a day's pay into a machine in less than a minute, so strategies range from conservative ball-at-a-time pea shooting to funneling a steady stream of cash and balls into the machine for 30 minutes or an hour and keeping a bucket under the machine to catch overflow.
We sat down next to each other and put our 500 yen coins into the machine. Ten minutes later we were both changing our overflow buckets out and buying 800 yen drinks from a waitress. For a straight three hours we received side-by-side flows of balls. I have no idea what I did right or wrong but on the assumption that it couldn't continue forever I chose to stop when the clock hands reached a certain point, and my date followed a few minutes later.
We stood up wordlessly, took our buckets of balls to the counter, and cashed out for 42,000 yen and change. Crazy.
Only once we were out of the parking lot and on our way home did my date turn to me and say we may have dodged a bullet -- security had their eyes on us the whole time and had evidently been making calls and creeping toward our chairs for the whole three hours. She had been scared out of her mind but was more afraid of suddenly standing up and insisting we leave.
She said that nobody just starts winning right out the gate, no two people can enter and win exact equal amounts consistently side-by-side for an entire evening, and other things. She said they might have approached us at some point, might have kept us from leaving or cashing out. She said they most certainly would be checking the machines and keeping our photographs at that location for a year.
Ah, Japan!
(Sat 9th May 2009, 3:15, More)
Pachinko
At this point I can't recall how much I knew about the "game" going in. We were out on a date and found a countryside pachinko parlour flashing away next to the river, and decided to brave the smoke stink and clatter. We promised a personal limit of 500 yen ($5.00 USD) each.
You put your 500 yen coin (or 1000 yen note) into an arcade-style machine that vends out a small number of metal balls, which you "flush" into the machine again in the hope that they'll fall into little holes, producing more balls. You sell the balls back to the parlour if you've got any at the end of the day. There is much talk about "loose pins" which gives the illusion of control over your balls and the direction of bounce. You can easily spit a day's pay into a machine in less than a minute, so strategies range from conservative ball-at-a-time pea shooting to funneling a steady stream of cash and balls into the machine for 30 minutes or an hour and keeping a bucket under the machine to catch overflow.
We sat down next to each other and put our 500 yen coins into the machine. Ten minutes later we were both changing our overflow buckets out and buying 800 yen drinks from a waitress. For a straight three hours we received side-by-side flows of balls. I have no idea what I did right or wrong but on the assumption that it couldn't continue forever I chose to stop when the clock hands reached a certain point, and my date followed a few minutes later.
We stood up wordlessly, took our buckets of balls to the counter, and cashed out for 42,000 yen and change. Crazy.
Only once we were out of the parking lot and on our way home did my date turn to me and say we may have dodged a bullet -- security had their eyes on us the whole time and had evidently been making calls and creeping toward our chairs for the whole three hours. She had been scared out of her mind but was more afraid of suddenly standing up and insisting we leave.
She said that nobody just starts winning right out the gate, no two people can enter and win exact equal amounts consistently side-by-side for an entire evening, and other things. She said they might have approached us at some point, might have kept us from leaving or cashing out. She said they most certainly would be checking the machines and keeping our photographs at that location for a year.
Ah, Japan!
(Sat 9th May 2009, 3:15, More)