Of Nakatsu and Pachinko

Even though Japan is supposed to be the land of the raising sun, i have yet to wake up early enough to see any sun raising (not as if the gloomy misty weather is going to help much in this aspect), but what i have done so far was to get a real good feel for the night scene in this town. Nothing comes up more vividly than the experiences of eating dinners and more dinners, hence my protential weight problem. Every night is a different cruisine and different eating experience, whereas day seems to pass by in a blur, being trapped most of the daylight hours inside the asian art museum.

Nakatsu is one of the more famous night life venues in the whole of kyushu. Its bright neon signs and the numerous yatai along the river is quite a well-known picture to most tourists in the region. However, i would hesitate to recommend any women travelling solo along to walk along the inner streets beyond its neon lights as Nakatsu is also infamous for being the "unofficial" red-light districit. As my japanese friend tells me, "there are not such thing as a red-light districit in japan, well not officially anyway". There are rows and rows of strip joints thinly disguised as pubs along the streets of Nakatsu where men in black suits stand waiting. Innocently, while walking through the area with friends, i remarked at the number of "cute" guys standing around, abeitedly looking quite menacing as they seldom smile, only to be told that they are really pimps. These men are dressed well and looked really neat, in fact a few looked as though they had make-up on and tweaked their eyebrows. According to friends, these men would come up to only male customers (without any female companions) and offer them photographs of the "wares" they have. If a deal is struck, the customers would be brought into the inner sanctum of these pubs to have a "closer encounter" i assume. Occasionally, there are also the "products" displaying themselves along the streets. I just had to take a closer look at this girl (who must be older than i am) dressed up in a tiny little sailormoon/student costume chatting up one of the men on the streets. Further on there were other back alleys and pubs which i did not dare to venture as it became increasingly seedy. Half-jokingly, i wondered out loud if black is the official uniform of such pimps because they are from the mafia, only to be told that only the yakuzas would be engaging in such businesses in the first place.

Nakatsu is also the home of numerous pachinko parlours. I guess it is a little like those jackpot machines we have up in genting but a sight rather rare in Singapore. Last night, we decided to follow a friend into one to experience another local favourite pastime. The first impression i had was the tremendous volume of noise in the place. It is brightly lit with rows upon rows of pachinko machines lined up. First, we had to change our money (Y2000 for starters) into a little farecard before we select one of the machines (seems like there are a few variations of different animations) and start playing. Once the farecard is slotted in, a rush of tiny little metal balls were released into a "drain" at the bottom of the machine near our lap (500 balls at a time). To play, all you had to do was to turn a knob on the side to shoot the balls into something that looks like a vertical pin ball machine. The aim is simple, get the ball into a little hole in the middle to start the jackpot rolling. Sounds simple? Not exactly because the hole is really small and before you know it, 500 balls can disappear before your jackpot even start to roll. Each ball fallen into the hole meant one chance at hitting the jackpot. The animations of the jackpot are rather cute and designed in such a way to entice you further. For example, just when you thought you might have lost, there could suddenly be a chance to hit the third correct number again. It is not difficult to feel the rush of excitement when you do hit the jackpot and start on the bonus round where every ball you bounce into the hole (now wider therefore meaning greater chance), will result in more balls being released into your little "drain" which you then have to released into a basket below to prevent the "drain" from overflowing.

Luck must be on our side that night in the pachinko parlour because within fifteen minutes into the first 500balls, we managed to jackpot once and by the end of the evening (around 2 hours) we had continuous jackpots and filled up 5 baskets of tiny metal balls. I think we were pretty giddy by the end of it and i could see why gambling can be so addictive, especially when you are winning. Well, officially, once you have those basket of balls counted individually (i think we had around 125,000 balls approximately) by the machine, you can use the tokens given to exchange for gifts like toys or even ladies handbags. But more importantly, or rather unofficially, you can take those tokens to the back alley and exchange them for cold hard cash. I think it is not difficult to figure out what we decide to go for. There is a certain amount of danger involve, holding on to the tokens and giving them to this little obscured window in the side lane where you cannot see them, and they cannot see you. All in all, we managed to win around 45,600yen with just 500yen worth of balls since there are still 1,500yen of credit left on our farecard. I think i can still hear the little sound of cash register going *kaching kaching* in my head amidst the drone of the pachinko machine in the background.

Like i say, i think i know why gambling is so addictive now and it certainly take two clear-minded individuals to walk out of the place loaded with cash and not have the urge to stay on playing (actually, it was already closing time). I was still grinning like an idiot when we decided to buy our friend coffee and cake afterwards with our winnings. In any case, after waking up in the morning and knowing that such "luck" can't possibly sustain forever and knowing all the horror stories of mothers abandoning their children playing pachinko, we were able to take such winnings of chance in our stride.

After all, we only have 1,500 balls left and i promise that once that's finished we wouldn't play anymore.
Really.