Everyone remember the horror during the Fukushima meltdown and how people banned together to help those in need? Well, that goodwill didn't last long...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ … XN20140831

aside:
"The food the evacuees eat and the clothes they wear are different," said Hiroshi Watahiki, 56, a chiropractor in Iwaki. "They can afford it from their compensation funds. They have time and money to go gambling since they're not working."

Curious if gambling is big in Japan? Seems like a lot of JRPGs have various casinos in them...

Actually, I'm only going off of what I've heard, but don't a lot casinos target younger demographics in Japan? I mean wasn't there a small surge in video game related fare like the Pachislot Akumajo Dracula games?

I know pachinko is particularly big in Japan. Not sure if it involves payouts though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_Japan

"In pachinko, when a player's ball makes it into a special hole to activate the slot machine and a jackpot is made, they are rewarded with more balls. Players can then exchange the balls for prizes of different value at a booth in the parlour. Money cannot be awarded at pachinko parlors as this would be in violation of the criminal code. However, players almost always exchange pachinko balls for special tokens, usually slits of gold encased in plastic, and then "sell" them at a neighboring shop for cash. Usually such shops are also owned by the parlor operators, but as long as the winners do not receive cash in the parlour, the law is not broken.[4]"

Anyone remember the Power Rangers episode where one of the rangers (Tommy? Or Jason?) gets addicted to pachinko? That was where I first learned about it.

Whenever I hear mention of Pachinko, I think of this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYkw-5htPw0

LOL ^^

Would be nice to get the refugees point of view on this story.

That was funny. Never heard of Pachinko before. Seems like it's a good way for Japanese to "gamble" by not legally gambling. Reminds me of how in the US you couldn't drink during Prohibition except for religious reasons. Americans, were very religious during that period for some reason.

You had really never heard of Pachinko? I have a Star Wars pachinko machine and if there is one thing it has taught me it is never to gamble. It is completely rigged and the chances of scoring a win are so slim. I don't know how many years I've had the thing and played it and next to no decent payouts. And no matter what you do with the balls, ultimately it comes down to the slots which are controlled internally by the software - you win as much as the makers of those machines want you to win at its particular setting, no more no less.

But I do like shooting the balls into the holes and the lights and the sounds. Probably best I don't live in Japan or I could get hooked just on the noise.

Nope, never heard of Pachinko before. Is this really what it's like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tRclMW6YqQ

Honestly, it doesn't seem all that exciting. Not that I'm into gambling, but one-armed bandits do seem a bit more enticing if I wanted to gamble, then again I suppose you could rig a Pachinko machine to release tokens or something like that...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic … hiles.html

Much uglier

Yep, that about sums it up. The draw for me is that you control the force of the balls which makes it feel like there is skill involved (barely) but that, like I said, is taken away once the slots get involved. Many machines have great lights, sounds and modes though which is also part of the draw.

Image quality isn't great but here's a demonstration of the Star Wars pachinko: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK7KpDTke2Y
I think there are demos of the fever modes on YouTube too.

The only other machine I have is the Jet Set Radio pachislo which is more like a traditional fruit machine (video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dbyGHi6LB8). It's much more basic and just about the slots which generally makes it less interesting but the number of wins and frequency of fever modes seems to be far greater on this machine which actually makes it more fun most of the time.

That's impressive. Myself, if I were to purchase a Star Wars game of such sort, I would want the Star Wars pinball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v83p6_itYrg

which is not the best pinball in my opinion, although I am far from an expert. Anyway, there's obviously a lot of skill involved in pinball which is cool. I recall when a kid getting this small mechanical game where you shot metal balls and tried to get them to fall into slots. I suppose that must be the "old" version of Pachinko? Never had patience for it.

edit: my favorite pinball
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5DY_Mr2n3U

In response to the original topic: Yes, even the Japanese have their collective failures of conscience. What do you think their "F*** humanity" stances are about in anime? There's plenty of anime that exists just to say that, given the chance, humans would just all back stab each other, especially in survivalist, every-person-for-themselves scenarios. There's cinema and literature from almost every culture that says just that.

I think art (literature, cinema, etc) that exposes people's darkness, does not exist "just to say that, given the chance, humans would just all back stab each other". For example, Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (one of my personal favorite novelette) is horrific, but is meant to raise awareness of the situation and hope that things can be amended. I feel that that is what most people in literature, cinema, the arts, do in such situations. Also, as "damning" as the actions of some of the Fukushima folk, it's NOTHING compared to what ISIS is doing:

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast … story.html

I have no idea how anyone, can hope to rationally deal with such fanatics.

Yeah, I would have loved a pinball machine. I've never had the space to get one and then I had kids and an economic crash and that was the end of my machine buying. With hindsight, a pachinko and pachislo were hardly the smartest purchases in the world...