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It was Friday, late afternoon. My friend Yasu and I had just finished a delivery
of quail eggs to the Machida Supermarket in Tokyo and were on our way to his
place in Midori-ku, Yokohama. We were tired. We were hungry. We barely had
any cash; only about 1,000 yen total. Suddenly, Yasu shouted, "Look! on
the right! This pachinko parlor is pretty good. I feel lucky today."
There was a parking spot right across the street. We pulled over, got out of the car, and made our way toward one of the ubiquitous shrines of Japanese gambling. Call it beginner's luck. Only 10 minutes after starting and 600 yen investment, the balls came tumbling out of the slot at a furious, cacaphonous pace. A pachinko usher (yakuza flunky?) quickly came over to my seat and provided a little rectangular plastic bucket for me to catch the overflow of marble-sized steel spheroids. The Obasan (little old lady) next to me was visibly pissed as she watched my winnings increase, while her machine continued to hungrily gobble 100-yen coins without even a hint of reciprocation. I felt a little ridiculous with all this commotion surrounding me, yet I couldn't conceal my excitement as the winnings poured out of the slot. The march music seemed louder than ever, the lights were blinking like a video arcade on steroids. This was really fun! All good things come to an end, however. The fellow who had brought me the bucket earlier had been carefully eying me and my machine to make sure I didn't win too much. He politely, yet firmly, asked me to leave my seat and cash in my winnings. Yasu guided me through the customary procedure for converting the balls into cash. We approached the cashier with the plastic tray and dumped all the balls into a counting device. In about 10 seconds the tally displayed in the digital readout. Admittedly, I was suspicious as to the accuracy, but I certainly wasn't going to dispute their methodologies and procedures. Based upon that total, the cashier offered one of the prizes: a tiny box of candy cigarettes. This little trinket provided a neat way to dereference my accumulation of steel balls to the eventual payoff in Japanese yen. The final step was to take my prize outside and look for the inconspicuous dutch door at the side of the building. The door was set up like a ticket window at a train station, but there was no glass for each person to see the other. I slid the box of cigarettes through the opening. A hand grabbed it and withdrew the box. The hand returned a moment later and passed me ¥ 10000. Frankly, I don't remember anything at all about the seating in that place. |