Here is a nation-wide phenomenon that is as annoying as it is widespread. Meet Pachinko, called a mix between a slot machine and a vertical pinball game. The idea is to toss hundreds of small steel balls into the game and, while most will fall completely through the machine, some will fall into holes that activate a slot machine, the hope being that three of the same pictures will appear at random. The player, to this I can attest, tends to seem like an emotionless machine himself, only controlling the speed with which the hundreds of tiny ball bearings are entered into the game. I know, exciting.

Still, there appears to be nothing stopping their popularity, particularly among older Japanese. The Pachinko industry employs nearly a third of a million people, is responsible for about 40 percent of Japan’s leisure industry, including bars and restaurants, and has an estimated 30 million regular players spending more than 30 trillion yen ($254.2 billion USD) a year, according to Japan Zone, an online travel guide. Those pachinko profits top the entire service industry in Japan, according to National Geographic. Like most effective forms of gambling, it is fairly startling how quickly one can lose his money, as 500 or 1,000 yen will likely yield nothing more than a few minutes of disappointment.

Bright enough to be street corner lighthouses, the Pachinko Parlors invariably emit a seedy, but somehow alluring glow from thousands of tiny light bulbs, which encircle the windows and doors. There is always at least one near every train station, and along the countryside, they are known for garishly destroying whatever beauty small Japanese towns might still exude. You step through sliding electric glass doors and, if the overpowering cigarette smoke doesn’t knock you over, you will find the blinding white light you found outside is suddenly accompanied by at least seven or eight of the most annoying noises known to man.

Upon entry, first, one uses cash or a prepaid card to buy a tray of these small steel ball bearings. It works out to be about 4 yen per ball, though 100 yen is usually the minimum purchase. Still, a serious pachinko player wouldn’t likely spend less than a few thousand yen, according to Japan Zone, an online travel guide.

Once entered by the player, the balls fall through a maze of nail-like pins. Essentially, the goal is to get your balls returned to you, but with a lot of new friends. Each ball has a cash value of about 2.5 yen each, according to Japan Zone. The newer machines feature a digital screen with popular cartoon characters and all the bright flashing lights and incessant noise that you’d expect from a building of bright flashing lights and incessant noise. The government sets win-ratios, but there are always allegations of parlors increasing winner totals on busy days to promote higher patronage.

Japan is full of stories of little old ladies who squeeze out a living by plunking thousands of yen into these machines and waiting for the mathematically inevitable victory, so-called professional pachinko players. Prizes actually include cookies and cigarettes from the parlor’s gift shop, but they are often – quietly – exchanged for money through a small window just outside the parlor in back alleys, according to the Japan Living and Travel Guide. Now, I haven’t seen any signs of the yakuza, Japanese organized crime syndicates, which are reputed to be active in the pachinko industry, but I have seen the traces of these windows and secretive exchanges of cash.

The flagrantly illegal companies that offer money in exchange for the legal winnings of players then sell the goods and tickets back to the parlor, after taking their own profit. So, it is a generally understood, technically illegal component of Japan. I suppose pachinko, a game that began to take hold of Japan in the 1950s, according to National Geographic, is too popular for much of a crackdown to come.

Concerned about attracting another generation of pachinko addicts, Sankyo, a leading machine maker has recently employed Nicholas Cage to appear in television commercials as an active pachinko-player, according to Japan Zone, an online travel guide. So it is nice to see that Cage is doing his part to create another age of gamblers and addicts among the Japanese people.

In 2001, a UK company bought shares of Tokyo Plaza, which runs about 20 parlors in Japan, according to Japan Zone, and made plans to bring pachinko to England, which I think is for the best. Finally, the best of Japan will find its way to the Western world.

Jaa ne,
Christopher

Posted by Christopher at 11:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Sociology Professor with whom I have become friendly offered me an expensive ticket to the Asian premiere of that Al Gore-narrated climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, a few weeks ago. The ground was in the midst of being pounded with the typhoon season’s last hurrah, but that was too little deterrent. I quickly snapped the ticket with a gracious “arigato gozaimasu,” agreed to meet him and two of his friends later that night, and readied excited thoughts of the chance to attend the Tokyo International Film Festival.

Established more than twenty years ago and annually offering the coveted the Grand Prix, given to the best film, the Tokyo Film Festival is clearly the continent’s premiere festival and one of the most respected in the world. Japan’s celebrated, though recently beleaguered, film industry has produced some of the world’s most respected cinematic productions, and they all take hold during a Tokyo October at the city’s film festival. Along with Asian masterpieces, films, documentaries and popular movies from throughout the world find their way to Tokyo in late October.

The professor kindly bought me a coffee at a Tully’s Coffee before we met two of his friends, an independent documentary filmmaker and the Director of the Fulbright program in Japan. I know, fancy.

We had a filling meal of appetizers and Japanese tea before we hastened back into the rain and rushed to the Roppongi Hills movie theater. Despite the weather, the enormous theater was almost filled to capacity, and I was eager to watch the film, as it had caused a bit of a stir before I had left the United States for Japan last summer.

Al Gore gave a video apology for not being able to attend the premiere, the same monotonously, depressive speaker I remembered him to be, only now with some extra weight and a more stylish wardrobe. The hour and a half I spent watching the film was worth my time, a fine collection of evidence of the human impact on climate change, if without adding anything dramatic to the debate. I was fairly disappointed in Gore’s inclusion of some needless potshots at President Bush, despite his stern-eyed declaration that, “This is not a political issue.”

It had a fine gleam, as films in this new age of entertaining documentaries often do. With the loss of pure grit and artistry through practicality of documentaries of the past (before the dazzling technological advances of the past decade or two) replaced with a focus on fast-moving and gimmicky foundations in the pursuit of big box office numbers, An Inconvenient Truth fell into, I thought, the same problems of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” another money-making, shot-calling documentary-esque movie, problems like stating facts as if the film itself was a firsthand source.

I don’t mean to suggest Al Gore was cooking the books, I just mean that I like to hear from where all the information comes. I had a few other smallish gripes, but, to be honest, thought it was a nice way to motivate the unmotivated, if only for a short while. Still, as is my nature, I immediately threw my criticism of the film at the Sociology professor and his friends, perhaps even more forceful in some attempt to justify my place in the dialogue with three older, better versed academics. I was met with stoned disapproval from the filmmaker for my comments, and he was seemingly taken aback by much of my criticism. I felt sheepish, but refused to redact, choosing rather to reform. In retrospect, I was probably petty in my criticism though, as I said, it was probably more in a sad attempt to win over my older companions. Still, I got the feeling that I didn’t make friends, not because of what I said, but that I said it. I didn’t come out of the movie and play liberal patty-cake. I tend to think films and lectures and rallies of this nature are considered third rails for some, untouchable from criticism, as, no matter their means, their message is inarguably purposeful. I failed the test and pissed on the atmosphere of change-can-happen, the-world-is-ours empowerment.

For this I apologize. Hey, I turn off the lights and recycle. Seriously! A lot more than most. Oh, the pangs of the critical and the disenchanted. Why is it that everyone, no matter one’s place on the political spectrum, seems so dismissive of varied thought? Perhaps I am, too. Oh, I suppose that at the very least it was a free movie!

Jaa ne,
Christopher

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I awoke before 8am, my icy nose the only portion of my body that was susceptible to the morning chill, as my eyes were covered with my winter hat. I peeled my hat and hood off my face, and discovered some sunlight trickling through a wide, frosted window pane.

I got up enough strength to force the body of blankets off of my chest, only hesitating a minute in the warmth of my bedding. I repacked my bag and folded up all that had made the uninsulated, seemingly unwelcoming autumn sleeping quarters more than bearable, indeed, quite comfortable.

I forced open the old door, which made enough noise to chase away a few deer that had been standing not fifteen or twenty feet from my tiny, isolated cabin. After brushing my teeth and marking an unlucky tree as mine, I hiked back out and rediscovered the messy home of Nikko National Park’s maintenance crew.

I was immediately and warmly welcomed by the old man, who appeared, in the morning’s light, to be even smaller and, if possible, even gentler and more welcoming. He offered me some coffee and, without much fussing, he helped me into a small, Japanese panel van. I managed to understand his questioning where I’d like to be dropped off and, not wanting to play him as my chauffeur and not knowing how to say anything else in Japanese, I asked him to take me back to the train station in Central Nikko. After the half hour drive, which was highlighted by more miscommunication that was solved with jovial gesticulating and smilingly silent suffering, he dropped me off at the station and, with a final wave, the man was gone, likely never to be seen by my eyes ever again.

After eating a sloppy breakfast of green tea and a soggy bento from a konbini, I boarded a bus, destined for a plateaued shelf of Mount Nantai. It was an hour long trip scaling narrow and windy, cutbacked roads on a hybrid bus. In the northwestern distance was Mount Shirane and the smaller peaks of Mount Hangetsu appeared every time my bus window faced south. Whatever the angle the colors were dazzling, the elevated views breathtaking, and the occasional brightly-red colored face of a furry macaque was refreshingly exhilarating.

Once at the top, the bus depot and area’s lone street, packed with cars and lined with tiny woodcarver and souvenir shop had all the feel of a ski-resort town. I suppose the cold and the elevation managed to override the obvious lack of any snowfall. Like mushy snow melting off a roof on a warmish day after a recent winter storm, I brainlessly stumbled downward, ignoring my map and remaining unaware of where I was going.

Despite my current permanent address in Philadelphia, the fifth most populous American city, I am, by no means, a city dweller. I am country boy by heart and an outdoorsman by wish. Nikko was a very welcome break from smoggy Tokyo, and there, even on an asphalted sore on Mount Nantai’s back, I immediately garnered a better appreciation for Japan and, oddly, simultaneously, became desperate to return to the glories of the United States.

The pounding wish to go home, manifested as a pain in what I would describe as my stomach, was, happily, suppressed when I came, through means of blind tour guide-ship, to the 318 foot Kegon-no-Taki Waterfall, an emblematic sight of Nikko National Park. In comparison to the brilliant autumn colors elsewhere, the deadened brown and decaying earth that surrounded the open faucet of Kegon Falls was not, by most standards, the finest of photographs at that moment. Still, as it poured down the rocky slope and vibrated my gloved hands as I stood hundreds of feet away on a viewing tower above the canyon that the waterfall rushed to fill, the waterfall was captivating, if only to my eyes and only at that moment in that place.

I stood there for some time, before wandering towards a woodcarver’s storefront, taken in by the delicate chisel-work of an old man on a stool. I walked in and found 600 square feet of intricate carvings, neatly displayed and subtly overpriced in the age of mass production. The methodical work of the old man eagerly defended the costs, particularly when teamed with his honest eyes and slaving and timid wife dressed in an aged kimono, but I simply couldn’t justify the $50 or $60 USD for a handheld carving of the three wise monkeys.

Still, I made a small purchase and walked out of the open-faced store. I finally opened the map I was given by Nikko’s eager tourist staff, and planned my final fun for Nikko, knowing I had a long trip home and lots of school work awaiting me.

I walked a short trail, not particularly memorable but calming and worthwhile nevertheless. After fidgeting at a street corner, I turned towards the famed Lake Chuzenji-ko. Resting over 4,000 feet above sea level, Chuzenji appeared to be a placid and intolerably unused swimming pool, surrounded by mountainous sunbathers with big bellies, who nervously squirmed as the clouds fought the warming sunlight. A few scattered poles used to anchor small boats, gave Chuzenji distance and depth, demanding I not mistake it for anything but enormous and impressive. A startling 500 feet at its deepest, it became colorless when the clouds repeatedly interrupted the sun, which appeared to be working on a fine landscape painting, Chuzenji both its subject and canvas.

I curled up on a cement-topped rock wall, guarding Chuzenji through the restrained means of eyes closed and mind drifting. In time, Tokyo began calling me, and I knew I had to tell Nikko that, while I had loved our time together, I was tied to another. I found myself on a long line, awaiting a bus to take me down Mount Nantai, and took to naming all of the U.S. states and their capitals. I watched the mountain peaks around me and thought it would be nice to be taking a bus to one of those American states to see the mountains that are apparently purple and quite majestic.

Rather, a couple hours later, I was back in Central Nikko, buying another bento and loading another train, destined for three more before I found myself back in Jiyugaoka of Meguro-ku, Tokyo. My key in the door, my bag on the ground, my body on my bed, staring at my computer and a pile of school books. Nikko: she was so beautiful, but found me at the wrong time and the wrong place. It was nice to meet her and be with her for a time, but our relationship was defined more by a ticking clock than a well-founded permanence.

Jaa ne,
Christopher

Posted by Christopher at 02:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Even if you are to visit the Tokyo region for a short time, Nikko is a worthwhile destination. For me, the city of just 93,000 sprinkled over 900 square miles has been the trip I had most wanted to take since I learned of it months ago. Less than 100 miles north of Tokyo and accessible by just a three-hour train ride, after a couple exchanges.

Tucked in the center of the Tochigi Prefecture of the Kanto Region, Nikko is known for its World Heritage Sites and shrines that are considered among Japan’s most visited. Still, my excitement was outside of Central Nikko, beyond the surrounding temples. I was excited to wander through the 540 square mile Nikko National Park, which is known for hosting Japan’s most beautiful and celebrated fall colors, at their tops during the first week of November.

I arrived at Tobu Nikko Station in the early afternoon, immediately able to breathe again, having been suffocated almost without fail in the smog of Tokyo for three months. I marched passed Shinkyo, the deep red Sacred Bridge. Originally built in 1636 and reconstructed in 1907 after being damaged in a flood, Shinkyo commemorates a legend that tells an eighth-century priest there crossed the Daiya-gawa River on the backs of two giant serpents.

Along a stone wall, seemingly held strong by its mossy cover, I watched two monks walk deliberately outside of the Rinno-ji Temple, home to the Sanbutsudo, the Hall of Three Buddhas, a heavily-lacquered representation of three forms of the Buddha.

Beyond Rinno-ji Temple, I came upon an enormous five-story pagoda. More than fifty feet tall, the pagoda was built in 1818 as a replacement to a mid-seventeenth century original that burned in a fire. This acts as an impressive welcome to the narrow concrete stairs that lead to the Tosho-gu Shrine.

Perhaps Nikko’s most well known attraction, and priced as such with an entrance fee of 1,300 yen ($11 USD), is the Toshu-gu Shrine. Built by 15,000 craftsmen on the behest of a shogun’s grandson in the early 1600s, the shrine used more than 2.5 million sheets of gold leaf and would cost hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars if built today, according to National Geographic.

Toshu-gu is surrounded by a handful of structures, notably including the Shinkyusha, or sacred stable, which is most famed for a carefully carved relief of three monkeys, the source of the phrase, “Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil,” as each of the three monkeys have their hands covering their ears, mouth and eyes respectively.

With that, after walking slowly through the mossy rock paths and autumn-color heavy trees, I returned to Central Nikko and its busy train station. In my truest style, I had made an arrangement to be picked up by a maintenance employee who would take me to what was described as a “cottage.” With it being the single most popular weekend of the year to visit Nikko and see its incredible foliage, every ryokan, hotel, resort, hostel, campground, cabin and train station bench had been reserved well in advance. I was headed well beyond where visitors of Nikko and its national park find themselves.

Well, the entire event was as ridiculous as it seems. I was approached by a scruffy, sniffling, humorless man of about forty, wearing a worn windbreaker and brandishing a silvery can of some energy drink. I piled into the front seat of his rusty, bluish two-door Volvo and stuttered through the extent of my Japanese small talk to this man, whose only response was an occasional, but always punctuated, sideways glance as he shifted gears and slurped from his can.

We drove twenty minutes out of Central Nikko, the streetlights and street traffic quickly lessening. He turned right, magi, onto what appeared to be a drive to a more secluded park campsite. We pulled onto a gravely road as we came to a series of sullen, yellow street lamps encircling a woodsy, brown structure appearing to be twenty by twenty feet in size, but he drove on. Another five minutes down the gravel road, with the sullen, yellow lights no longer recognizable, the quirky and silent man with ruffled black hair who, I realized, had entertained a consistent, yet all but inaudible conversation with himself throughout the drive, drove on. We finally came to a long metal gate and he stopped the car, flung open the door, and unlocked the gate. He returned to the car without a word, drove through and, after getting out again to relock the gate, we were back in motion, rocking and popping through and over the patchwork of a road.

Another few minutes down the road and suddenly the heavy canopy of tree and brush opened as we pulled up to a small collection of time-worn, wooden buildings, surrounded by a clutter of rusty machinery and forgotten projects of plant-cultivation, all lit by moonlight and a glow from inside one of the structures. I was welcomed by a tiny, cooing older man, perhaps sixty, but his waddle was active and exuberant as a waddle can be expected to be.

The two of them led me into a mess of a room, the floors and wall space jammed with what I can only describe as junk, forgotten tools, piles of yellowed periodicals, stacks of paper, pieces of machinery without homes, and too many items for which I had no explanation or name. They cleared off a table and, after a discussion with each other, proceeded to try their very best to explain a great deal of which I couldn’t understand. I think I explained to them I didn’t need a shower and wasn’t that hungry, somewhat in my broken Japanese. I paid them 1,500 yen ($13 USD), and after a series of bows exchanged between myself and this giggling, smiling old man, witnessed by the still disinterested man who drove me there, we walked back into the still and crisp November night.

With flashlights in hand, the three of us set foot down an indecipherable path of rock and uneven earth. The old man insisted on using his flashlight to light my every step, and he graciously and excitedly pointed out a brilliant full moon. We walked fifteen minutes in the dark, passed with a series of attempts by the old man and me to communicate, more often ending in a failure of laughter, funny bows and a flurry of apologetic Japanese.

In time, and after a few wrong turns, we came to an earthly cabin, appearing to be perhaps ten feet by eight feet in size. After prying open the door, which it seemed hadn’t been open in decades, we poured into the musty and cobwebbed space, eight tatami mats large, the old man needlessly, but kindly explained how to lay out a futon and litter myself with the chilly blankets.

After making a small fire, warming myself by it, and then retiring back to my “cottage,” I put on an extra sweatshirt, sweatpants, a winter hat and three pairs of socks and climbed underneath six, yes, six, fleece blankets and closed my eyes. I slept very well, save for the screeching of the macaque monkeys that populate the mountains of Nikko. I woke up once to walk onto the creaky cottage porch, to walk into the chilly night, ready to be hugged by the frigid air, dark night and long-fingered trees. I hugged myself and caught what appeared to be a monkey scamper away. How odd, I thought. I returned into my cabin, snuggled into a cocoon, underneath a seventh blanket and fell asleep, ready to wake up and explore Nikko National Park the next morning.

Jaa ne,
Christopher

Posted by Christopher at 01:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)