Japan Trip 2017–2018: For Some Reason I Really Wanted To Gamble
I suppose it was because I had more money to spend than I had in my past vacations, but I found myself really wanting to gamble when I was in Japan. Which is absurd, of course, because gambling is illegal in Japan and absolutely nobody does it in any form.
Actually, they do despite that, and the law specifically looks the other way. The massive pachinko/slot complexes in any neighborhood are basically the Japanese casino, where ordinary folks go to lose modest, controlled sums in the hopes of making a modest, controlled jackpot. The money stuff isn’t done on-site; you have to know some ground rules which I will leave to you to discover.
On this trip I was starting to throw away my fear of walking into places and humiliating myself as a foreigner who could hardly speak the language. I talked to people a little bit. I complimented folks! I completed basic transactions! I used “そうですね” effectively, but not gratuitously! And I felt pretty good, albeit cautiously so.
I felt so damn good that I walked into a pachinko place. Aion in Akihabara lacks the ear-shattering volume of its neighbors and is heavily anime-decorated, so you know the themes of the machines you’re going to get.
I wasn’t really looking for the best odds around: I just had my heart set on playing the Symphogear machine. The singing/fighting idol anime’s particular kind of bombast would suit the very gaudy pachinko aesthetic best, and I really wanted to see what the jackpot would be like for an anime where the characters sing/scream as they punch through mountains.
People approach pachinko as this unknowable beast, but it’s actually really easy: put your cash in on the left slot of the machine, press the button that loads balls (this is probably the hard part for a non-reader), and turn the lever a little bit to the right to aim your shot. From there the machine takes care of all the rest.
So I sat down, I got comfortable… and then I shot too far to the right, accidentally blasting the ball over the play field and thus wasting it. This particular machine goes totally crazy if you do this. You hear the unmistakable “WEE-OO! WEE-OO!” of police sirens, and a calm, firm, but very loud voice blares:
“PLEASE RETURN THE LEVER TO THE LEFT POSITION. PLEASE RETURN THE LEVER TO THE LEFT POSITION.”
When I returned the lever to the left position and instinctively put my hands up (oh god I’m not touching it, swear to God, officer), the alarm just kept on blaring. I couldn’t make it stop.
I don’t often freak out from anxiety, but with a foreign gambling machine yelling at me and lacking the conversational skills to fix the situation, I got the hell out of there. And then I brought some friends to back me up. Actually, this story takes place exactly before the Idolmaster story does.
The attendant told us what I was doing wrong and, clearly relieved that the gaijin could be taught what the hell they were doing and weren’t going to try and put a chair through the machine, left us to it.
As I had suspected, Symphogear pachinko completely owns. The reason is very simple: it’s constantly screaming and you are just along for the ride with it. While you lose your money, the game on the screen “spins” like a slot machine while you hope you hit the jackpot. Sometimes you’ll get a scene from the series, and if you’re really lucky the music will pick up with one of the heroines’ signature songs. To create tension and keep the player hooked, these scenes get closer and closer to telling you you’re going to win.
We had a “reach” (one of the scenes that plays when it’s possible to get a jackpot) that went on for about two or three minutes, escalating and escalating until my favorite character, Tsubasa, came crashing onto the screen, singing at the top of her lungs and slicing up monsters with both her sword and with her motorcycle that is also a sword. At this point we are all captive to the suspense.
Aw shit, man, this has gotta be it. I’m gonna win. Tsubasa is going to chop up those guys and I’m gonna win like crazy. Thank you Nana Mizuki. I will buy your merchandise.
Tsubasa cut those fools and drove through that water tower just like in the anime… and then nothing happened. We couldn’t believe it. Not after all that. There was no way. We weren’t even in super-maybe-now-you’ll-win mode. It just went right back to normal, as though it had never shown us something so beautiful as a pop diva bisecting monsters while riding a swordorcycle. As though it didn’t owe us money after showing us something so good!
You see, these things lie. That’s kind of the point. There’s really little difference from the slot machines back home; it’s just that if you’re reading this you’re probably more interested in playing a pachinko with Kaiji in it than a slot machine based on the movie Titanic. (I lost on Kaiji pachinko too, another day. And Garo after that.)
Anyway, after the near-miss I did exactly what the machine wanted: I followed up my sunk cost with 2000 yen more, in hopes that this time we’d get the jackpot. I probably would have walked away earlier, if I thought I’d ever have the chance to play this silly game again. In the end, I lost 4000 yen total to Symphogear pachinko. Passed by the shady booth down the block, looked at the guy who gives you the money out of the corner of my eye. Thought, “Dammit. I was almost there.”
So I’ve pretty much had the real pachinko experience.
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