Want to bet?

Gambling is a huge pastime in Japan. Real hardcore casino poker 'n' tequila gambling is outlawed but that doesn't stop anyone from giving away stacks upon stacks of their hard earned cash for that "might win" feeling. There are three main ways to get rid of your money- Betting shops (soccer, bikes and horses), Scratch/Lotto Cards and the startlingly noisy Pachinko.

The reason I mention them at all is that these places are everywhere. The exit to each station is crammed with busy scratchcard kiosks, lucky cat totems waving from the walls. Ikebukoro has too many to count and even a backwater like Shakuji Koen has three.

The betting shops are less prolific, probably only slightly more numerous than in England. They make up for that, though, with sheer volume of noise. When you walk into any shop in the UK the assistants will probably ignore you, more so if it's a betting place. The Japanese way of greeting customers is the complete opposite. Shop keepers will yell their hearts out if you so much as walk past the door. 'Irashyaimase, Irashyaimase, Irashyaimase' they bellow, trying so hard to welcome you that you feel guilty just for not entering or buying anything. Outside betting shops high pitched recorded messages yell out 'Irashyaimase' at deafening volumes. Long strings of squeaky Keigo peppered with a few exciting English phrases. 'Lucky!' 'Bigu Win!' 'Grando Prizu!'.

But loudest, most numerous and most popular of all betting places are the Pachinko, the terrifying slots of Japan. Nothing I can say will properly capture the atmosphere of these epilepsy inducing buildings. The noise they produce is beyond belief. Imagine the sound of a thousand children playing gameboys at full volume. Now imagine a hail storm of coins bouncing one a concrete road. Put those two sounds together, amplify the result a hundred times and it still wont be as shocking as the pachinko.

Rows upon rows of businessmen sit on the small cramped stools, shoveling token after token into the machines. Rows upon rows upon rows, all in identical black suits, not a woman among them. The Pachinko is, I guess, a form of escapism from the dull daily grind of the Japanese salary man. My own pet theory is that spending hours in a Pachinko makes everything else seem better. My other theory is that hell is one big pachinko, getting steadily more noisy and cramped as you head down towards the ninth level.

Seeing them all in their, cooped up, sweating and slaving away at the slots makes me want to liberate these poor Pachinko drones. I want to march in, throw the doors wide open and yell 'You can go, I have saved you, you are free!'.

And then I realize they are already.

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Trivia: As most forms of gambling are either illigal under Japanese Law or run directly by the government, the privately owned pachinko are not allowed to give money directly to their patrons. Instead you buy and win chips which, through a useful loophole, can be exchanged for prizes or cash at separately owned token redeeming shops. This is why, in the famous Pokemon Red and Blue (which I guess most people of my age will have played), prizes aren't collected in game corner itself, but in another building a few blocks away.