PACHINKO

When you step into the a pachinko parlor in Japan, which are all over, it's evident the country has a massive gambling habit. But then again, they call it "gaming" not "gambling."

On a sweltering summer's day, salary men on lunch duck from air-conditioned building to air-conditioned building. One common oasis from the heat (and office) is a pachinko parlour, Japan's equivalent of a slot arcade.

Inside is uniquely Japanese. Smoke carpets the room, and the sound is deafening. Lined up in long dizzying rows, the jangling machines look like the mutant love children of old school pinball games and futuristic one-armed-bandits, each one pimped out with powerful speakers, intense video montages, and a barrage of flashing lights. The cocktail of sound, smoke, and light shake out to a full-on assault of the senses. How this environment bodes well for the addicted, perplexes me everytime!

Even at noon on Sunday in this small industrial city, players pack the narrow aisles of the parlor.

Row upon row of pachinko machines echo a cacophony of bells and cartoon voices, and the mostly male players sit rigid, watching silver balls bounce around (pachinrefers to the sound of the 'ko', or ball), hoping they will fall down into the winning centre hole. The more balls they win, the more cash they will get.

This pinball derivative played by millions of people in Japan has been popular in the country since the 1940s - although today the machines are much more sophisticated and addictive than the original mechanized game. Within the pachinko machine's frame of pulsing LED lights, silver metal balls tumble around on pins. They fall from the top, controlled only by gravity and the luck of which pins they bounce off. Once in motion, the player can only watch and hope. Dominating the centre of each machine is an LCD screen that loudly plays segments of the latest Japanese anime(animation) or TV show along with the score of any winnings.

The players sit transfixed—one hand resting on the machine's dial, another on a joystick—their eyes glued to individual video screens and cigarettes dangling from their lips. Most of them look like they retired more than a decade ago..

The game seems pretty simple—in theory. You buy a bunch of small silver balls and then use a dial to control how fast they shoot through a course of pegs. Get them in the right holes, win more balls. When it comes down to it, those who play are evasive about actual net gain or losses, understandably.

"The government does not acknowledge that this video game aspect can heighten pachinko addiction this is a big problem," says Naoko Takiguchi is a sociology professor at Otani university in Kyoto, who runs gambling addiction rehab programs in Japan

Japan has recently made some regulatory changes to deal with addiction—most notably requiring the payout system to be less "exciting." However, since pachinko is still considered a game - not gambling - the highly addictive nature escapes scrutiny. In Japan, addiction is already a topic that people don't want to admit or even talk about. "It takes a long time for people to seek help," says Naoko, "it's the shame."

For years the Yakuza, Japan's famed mafia, played a crucial role in running and regulating the industry. Now that task has been taken over by the national police, and there have been reports of corruption and nepotism. There's a joke in Japan that the real police pension is a cushy high-paying job in the pachinko industry.

So how has such a shady, addicting, game of chance remained legal in a country that bans casinos and online gambling? It all has to do with one small, extra step in the cash out system. There's the trick.

When one's session finishes, you trade in the balls won for a "special prize" - a card with his winning information and a little candy box. It's got picture of Hello Kitty on it. You then takes the card and candy outside the parlor to a shoebox-sized slot in the wall about ten feet from the entrance. He passes them through the hole. A shadowy figure hands over the winnings. And presto. Since the money is obtained through this third party exchange shop, pachinko is not technically gambling.

Unlike casinos, which are based on direct cash winnings and therefore illegal under Japan's strict gambling laws, pachinko is legal on a loophole related to how you claim your prize.

The only element of control the player has over the game - is the doughnut-sized dial used to shoot the balls into the top of the machine, fast or slow, depending on his spin of the dial. The balls bumbled around like silver flies against a window, bouncing off pins, toward the bottom where gamers will them to enter the central chamber. When they do, the screen's animation lit up one of three numbers from one to nine. In slot machines, three matching cherries means a win; in Pachinko, three matching numbers (such as 444 or 999) on the screen wins more metal balls to play on with or to cash in.

It sounds elaborate for a game, but pachinko is both big business and a national obsession - there are more than 12,500 pachinko halls in Japan, some with slot machines, which together make four times as much profit as all the rest of the world's legal casino gambling combined. The game itself generates 30 trillion yen profit a year for the pachinko companies. The pachinko industry constitutes Japan's largest leisure activity. The sector employs over 300,000 people and brings in about 225 billion dollars a year. That's more than two times the revenue from all legal US gambling operations—in other words, about the GDP of a country like Israel.