Rain streamed steadily from the clouds all morning, so we didn’t go to the bay as planned.  However, this morning was still fun as I finally got to fulfill my lifelong dream of creating my own page of sticky pictures mostly with the help of Ayako, though Matt and Josh contributed their creativity to the final product.  It was a continuation from the randomness of the night before where, after a solemn afternoon at a memorial, we headed to the batting cages.  Josh and Matt had a home-run derby in the highest speed cage, taking turns cooling off with cold, moist washcloths provided by the kind lady at the front desk.  Ayako and I tried our best in the slow pitch booth and had a few good hits.  As everyone knows, girls are not as gross and sweaty as boys, so we didn’t need moist towels.  After Matt beat Josh, we headed downstairs to an ancient arcade (we seem to be seeing a lot of those lately).  While everyone else played a game, I ate a cookie because I was hungry.  Very hungry.

I was lucky to have that cookie.  We’d gotten a few of them from a give away at the train station.  At first glance I had thought the freebee was a package of tissues paired with a small pink cloth bag.  Tissue giveaways are big here.  (One time we got some free boxes of milk too.)  People stand outside the train stations or on the sidewalks passing them out.  The pocket-sized packages come with a little business card or advertisement inside.  Personally, I think this is a great way to advertise because who just wants a piece of paper?  I hate getting flyer’d.  But as an allergy sufferer occasionally afflicted with the sniffles, I will happily accept a package of tissues.  Of course the advert part of it is completely lost on me since I can’t read kanji, but at least I put the tissues to good use.  And presumably most of the recipients of the tissues are literate in their national language, so somebody must be reading the advertisements.  At some point during the day I decided to check out the little cloth bag (which is bright pink with a hideous pattern, for those of you wondering).  I saw that there was an additional item, Kleenex I assumed.  But wait, the package was stiff.  The opaque white wrapper revealed no further clues, so I opened the bag and found a cookie.  Lucky me.  It held off the hunger until we found a restaurant.

We ate in Chinatown.  Rather, China street; it wasn’t actually much of a town, though it did seem to be a bit of a tourist attraction.  Actually it is apparently the oldest Chinatown in Japan, and one of the largest.  But having visited China recently, I found it strange that something so not China could be seen as a “Chinese experience” in Japan.  Chinatowns are sometimes a peculiar creation, a strange evolution of what they once were—places where Chinese immigrants lived.  Some are still more about the living than attracting tourists.  But Nagasaki’s Chinatown, prettily glowing with paper lanterns, definitely seemed the let’s-attract-as many-tourists-as-we-can type.  It wasn’t the lanterns that made me question the authenticity.  There’s a popular food street in Beijing lit with lanterns every night—Guijie, or Ghost Street.  It was the intention of the labeling and promotion.  The shops lining the street seemed more about catering to the desires of tourists than the daily needs of Chinese residents (not counting the need to make a living).  This feeling was a little similar to my view on Singapore’s Chinatown.  Why does Singapore have a “Chinatown” when practically everyone there is Chinese [descent] anyways?

Not that this is necessarily bad, I’m just trying to differentiate the types of Chinatowns.  In my opinion there are few “real” Chinatowns.  By “real” I mean, as our friend Ben puts it, places that mysteriously function on their own economy.  Cheap vegetables, $3 plate lunches and that sort of thing.  San Francisco and New York come to mind.  Places that are more realistic than touristic.  Actually, I take that back.  Who am I to classify what is real and what is not?  Sure, some Chinatowns offer more of a commodification of Chinese culture than others.  But perhaps there are other, more redeeming aspects that I miss because I didn’t stay long enough to have a good look around or maybe came on the wrong day and missed a big festival or something.  Anyways, this whole Chinatown discussion with myself is a good reminder to be critical of my own criticalness, in the hopes that I will learn more than that which I take in at first glance (or experience).  I want to see the places I visit from as many angles as possible.

Getting back to dinner, each of us ordered a very satisfying portion of noodles. We walked away from the restaurant re-energized and set off to find a pachinko parlor.  Ok, so maybe we didn’t exactly have the intention of finding one, but we were all curious about this national pastime.  Just say it: pachinko, pachinko, pachinko!  It is a fun word to say.  Between the four of us, this is what we knew: pachinko is sort of like slot machines, only with pin balls.  Pachinko parlors look like arcades; bright lights, cartoon characters, music, etc.  Many forms of gambling are illegal in Japan, so you don’t actually win money at pachinko.  You win prizes.  Then you take these prizes outside to a back alley where there are (surprise surprise) people willing to trade your prizes for hard cash.  These prize-exchangers hang out in little booths (aka hole in the wall of a building) that look like a ticket window, except all you can see of the other person through the hole are their hands.

What we didn’t know about pachinko is how the game is actually played.  So on our way back to the trolley we stepped inside a pachinko parlor for a look around.  The air was smoky and had a neon glow from all the lights and rows of shiny machines.  We tried to be stealth and watch how this guy was doing it.  By the way his cigarette hung out of the corner of his mouth and the huge pile of pin balls overflowing his tray into buckets, we figured he was good.  The “game board” (for lack of a better word) consists of little pegs and slots; somewhat similar to those little puzzles you get as party-favors as a kid.  The man turned a handle and a mechanism picked up a ball and tossed it up into the machine where it bounced around on the pegs.  He had a continual stream of balls flying up into the machine.  It did not appear that there was any way to control the balls once they were “in play.”

Matt decided to give it a go.  We had been warned by Josh’s friend, Daiki, that 10,000 yen (10USD) can easily go in 1 minute, so we figured Matt’s 100 yen coin wouldn’t last very long.  Matt popped his coin into the machine and a couple dozen or so little balls rolled out onto the tray.  Carefully he flicked the lever and we watched as one little silver ball flew up into the game board.  It bounced around for a little bit before falling to the “loser” slot at the bottom of the screen.  A couple of his other tries were more successful, landing in the higher slots and resulting in a payout of a few extra balls.  It didn’t seem too exciting.  Had we missed something?  We discreetly looked around to see how others were playing.  But there is nothing discreet about four foreigners in a pachinko parlor.  One of the stewards noticed and took pity on us, trying to show Matt what to do.  Ayako interpreted—the player’s control was in how he turned the lever.  Once he finds a good angle, a player can hold the lever in the same spot and a stream of balls will be released into the same spot resulting in all the balls going into the high-worth slots.  So that’s what the old guy was doing.  We thanked the steward, but left soon after as Matt was out of pin balls and none of us desired to play again. The conclusion: pachinko seems to be a pretty lame game, but saying “pachinko” is still fun and we had a good weekend.

Next weekend is the annual Sendai tug-of-war match, which we will sadly miss by just a couple of days.  This is an example of the rope that will be used.  (And that’s my brother standing next to it.)

I can only imagine that it will be one crazy game of tug-of-war.  You can read about it on my brother’s blog.