How to Play Pachinko

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Pachinko is a device used for amusment and prizes and is related to pinball machines. Although originally strictly mechanical, modern pachinko machines are a cross between a pinball machine and a video slot machine. Pachinko is said to have been invented sometime after World War II in Nagoya, though the date is sometimes questioned. The machines are widespread in Japan in establishments called "pachinko parlors", which also often feature a small number of slot machines.

The player purchases a large number of small steel balls which are inserted, in bulk, into the machine. Originally, machines had a spring-loaded lever for shooting the balls individually, but modern machines use a round "throttle" that merely controls how quickly an electrically fired plunger shoots the balls onto the playfield. The balls then drop through an array of pins, and usually simply fall through to the bottom, but occasionally fall into certain gates which make the machine pay out more balls.

Most current machines include a slot machine (these are called "pachi-slo"), and the big winnings are ultimately paid not from the balls falling into gates, but from the slot machine matches that follow. In fact, in many modern machines the balls have nothing to do with determining winnings, which are based strictly on electronic random number generators.

The winnings are in the form of more balls, which the player may either use to keep playing, or exchange for tokens or prizes such as pens or cigarette lighters. Under Japanese law, cash cannot be paid out, but there is virtually always a small exchange centre located nearby (or sometimes in a separate room from the game parlor itself) where players can conveniently exchange tokens or prizes for cash. Such pseudo-cash gambling is theoretically illegal, but from the sheer number of pachinko parlors in Japan, it is clear that the activity is at least tacitly tolerated by the authorities. (In fact, no pachinko parlor without a cash payout window has ever been documented.[citation needed])

As a quasi-gambling activity, pachinko is widely held to have links to organized crime (specifically the Yakuza). (There have also been links to the government of North Korea, which has allegedly been able to siphon funds from the sizeable population of Pyongyang-aligned ethnic Korean Pachinko Parlor owners in Japan)

Pachinko parlors share the reputation of slot machine dens and casinos the world over garish decoration, over-the-top architecture, the smell of tobacco, a low hanging haze of cigarette smoke, the constant din of the machines, and blinding levels of illumination to keep players entranced for hours in their games. Pachinko parlors are by far some of the most flamboyant and colorful buildings you can see in Japan.

Since Japan ratified the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2004, many public anti-smoking laws have been passed. Recently (as of May 2006), a number of the laws are starting to be enforced. The pachinko parlor is one of the few places smokers can go where the regulations haven't caught up with them. There are preliminary discussions in the Japanese Diet to extend public smoking controls to pachinko parlors; however, no legislation has been proposed.

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