The Dark Side of Japan

Trick of Pachinko Industry

Japan legalized Casino officially on Friday approving a long continued bill and this was harshly opposed by the opposition houses. 

My take on this is, go ahead and legalize Casino. In Japan there's been long existing semi-Casino industry called Pachinko. 

  

 I have personally been to this type of Casino chains before but the environment there is just f*cking horrible especially for non-smokers. I don't mind smoke going around me on a city street, in a restaurants and etc. But smoke with this jam crowded place with really irritating pin-ball sound makes the whole experience so bad that you after 20 minutes will definitely be carving to breathe some fresh air. 

This however, I said as semi-Casino and it's been illegal in Japan to have any Casino business.

Then you may ask, why is there Pachinko? Here's the trick that this industry has long used this law loophole to avoid getting exposure from police.

You basically play Pachinko and it's really similar to pre-installed game in old windows probably called something like "pin-ball" and when you win, as a reward you get tiny silver balls. 

Later you are to exchange these silver balls to respective prizes. You can exchange your balls to various products but here's the deal. You can exchange these balls to so called "special prize" which usually looks something like this.

After receiving this, you can go out of the Pachinko premises, and almost always, you will find a tiny place located right next to Pachinko. Which would look something like this.

This place, they say that they have nothing to with each other and this tiny place buys the special prize for respective price. So Pachinko has been surviving without major exposures because of this trick that they use. I don't know probably best named as "indirect prize exchange" or whatever. 

Pachinko was first established interestingly not by Japanese, but Koreans who resided in Japan after World War II. After the war, Koreans in Japan (people who are now referred to as ethnic Koreans or Zainichi Koreans in Japanese word). It was hard for those Koreans to actually find jobs due to discrimination and unstable economic situation at that time. So many Koreans started their own business in Japan like tailor, Korean restaurant, Korean BBQ, and Pachinko was one of those businesses. It has long been a symbol for business of Koreans in Japan but now most of the big Pachinko joints are owned by Japanese, or ethnic Koreans who have been through naturalization process. 

With everything being said, I don't know why casino is now a big issue. I mean Pachinko has been around in Japan for more than half a century so why make a big fuss out of this? Casino always existed in rather a weird way in Japan. Now its existence is rather clear and they can now start with not only Pachinko the pin-ball, but also Black Jack, Porker, and etc.