Home » Japan » Deafened by the Roar of Pachinko ... or how to embarrass lesbians without really trying

I was always under what was probably a poorly uninformed impression that Japan was a quiet, understated country. In my few (wasted) years in high school Japanese class I learnt about the culture of a quiet people, who respected tradition and weren’t amenable to the loud, disrespectful ways of us Westerners (hence the trainee Japanese teacher who came on exchange to Maclean High School for a few months and after one period of our Year Nine elective Japanese class she was so shaken by our loud and outrageous behaviour she took off the remainder of the week and steeled herself against any further aural assaults by refusing to come to any more of our classes).

Deafened by the Roar of Pachinko ... or how to embarrass lesbians without really trying

Patrick Gatland
2007-01-23 12:54:33

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tune that is played. I was very impressed - but what was even better was when we went through Takadanobaba station the tune they played was the theme from Astroboy!!! Now if that’s not cool then I do not know what is. Apparently, they play it there because the creator of Astroboy lived there at some
point. Forget naming streets, parks or building after you - when you’re famous in Japan you get the “Stand Clear Doors Closing / Mind the Gap” announcement re-worked in your honour. Now THAT is cool. (For an example of each of the melodies and a description of the train line check out the following, scarily detailed website. What I did learn from this site is they appear to have the tune played at different pitches depending on the direction you are going in. Did I mention attention to detail anyone? http://hisaai-hp.hp.infoseek.co.jp/JREast/Yamanote/Yt_s_eg.html).

The only disappointment from my trip to Tokyo was my one experience with a Pachinko parlor. I’ve had a long held belief that Pachinko was this crazy, fun and almost poppy game that would be hours of entertainment - I think it’s another misapprehension from Year Nine Japanese class.On my last day in Japan I figured I would finally pop into one of those huge, brightly lit Pachinko mega-plexes. When I walked in from the busy street I stepped into a wall of sound that I was unprepared for. I never realized how much noise millions of ball bearings could make as they simultaneously bounced their way down what is practically a pinball machine stood upright. What greeted me in Ueno was a nasty, smoke laced display of boring gambling which gave me the feeling I was back in the pokies section in any old pub in Sydney. As the noise washed over me all I could see was bored and sad old people pouring their time and shiny little balls into Pachinko machines. I got shivers as it reminded me of all those pensioners stuck on the slot machines at 6AM in Las Vegas I had seen at the start of ...