I had another holiday day again yesterday. I got up at about ten and then a couple of hours later we were drivng to the beach. We played frisbee and footie and I saw a jellyfish for the first time. Then we went to this arcade game centre and played on pachinko.
This is a game which is a cross between a fruit machine, a video game and a game of pinball. It`s in the film Lost in Translation. You have a dial which you turn which releases balls vertically. You have to try and get them in this hole in the bottom centre of the board. This is very tricky. When you do this the fruit machine part goes into play and you have to get three of a kind. When you get four balls in the hole, you start getting luckier. You get these animations in the screen of ninjas fighting and if they win you usually win. I was playing on a samurai one and was getting seriously addicted to it shouting and swearing at it.
I was winnning big. I had two pots of tokens full of coins after about an hour of winning nothing. The one I was playing on was only in an arcade centre and so you wouldn`t win any money but if you play in a proper pachinko centre you can easily win 500 quid. The game is therefore very popular in Japan. You can imagine it can`t you. I come to Japan for a job and leave with a gambling problem. Nice.
