Pachinko Winner

Today was our last full day in Tokyo; it's gone fast. Today was our most relaxing one yet in Japan. Jack decided to get up and go to Disneyland but Matt and I didn't want to do that. So we had a lazy morning. Even when we left the airbnb we still didn't really know what we were going to do. We started strolling in the general direction of the Shinjuku train station and passed the a pachinko parlor and decided to check it out, since that was on our list of things to try anyway.

What a confusing game! It doesn't help that we couldn't understand any of the instructions, or the buttons, or the words that it was saying, or even the attendant who was trying to help us. It might be easier to learn though if you understand Japanese... maybe. But first, and explanation of what pachinko is. Pachinko is Japan's way of gambling. It's like a vertical pinball machine and you get to "control" how hard it gets launched up to the top. Generally it pings around uselessly to the bottom but sometimes it bounces in to the correct slot. That's when the fun happens. This is when it turns into more of a familiar slot machine with numbers scrolling down and you want to get three of the same number in a row. We hardly ever got three in a row and it wasn't really clear what happened, since it seemed like different things happened each time. 

So anyways, we bounced around to a few different machines until we found some that we liked. Some of them shot out balls continuously which I didn't like because then you went through all of your balls quickly, so we found one where you could shoot just one at a time. We each played with 1,000 yen (just under $10) for a little over an hour without much excitement happening, but we were pretty sure we had an idea of what was happening anyway. But we were hungry so we were done with that for the time.

We continued on to the train station and took it to Shibuya again. We wandered around there until we found a ramen place which looked good. I can't get enough of ramen. Especially since as we're walking around I'm generally cold so hot noodles and soup just always really hits the spot. And there's so many different types of ramen! I didn't realize that before being in Tokyo. We found a spot today which had more of a soy-based broth and I really liked that. I think it was my favorite one so far. 

Then we kept strolling through the area checking out the different shops and things. We saw a restaurant with puffer fish swimming in a tank in the window; they were weird looking. Then we decided we needed to try some Japanese pancakes since those are a big thing here. We found Mee's Pancakes which was a cute little cafe. We got some chocolate covered pancakes which came with strawberries and bananas. It was pretty good; honestly I don't think it quite lived up to the hype. They were super big and fluffy, but because of that they also tasted really eggy. I'm glad I tried it but I think I'll stick to my normal pancakes.

We watched and participated in the "Shibuya scramble" one last time since we probably won't make it back to that area again. Then we caught the train back to Shinjuku. I realized that I never got any pictures of us playing Pachinko, and since it was still early we decided to go back and play a little more. This time I hit the jackpot! But since this had never happened before I had no idea what was going on or what I was supposed to do. All of a sudden my machine was making a lot of noise and there were robots dueling on my screen. When you're in the slot machine phase trying to get the three numbers in a row if you get two in a row then it's called a "reach". So the robots dueling on the screen were different numbers, where I was cheering for the number 8 so that I would get my numbers in a row. So 8 represented the good robot and all the other were bad robots. Apparently at this point almost always the good robot loses, but my number 8 was victorious! Then things really got crazy. Balls were flying everywhere and pouring out of the machine into my tray. I really had no idea what I was supposed to do. I ended up winning 444 balls, but looking back I realized I unknowingly prematurely ended my winning streak by not continuing to to trigger the balls. But regardless, I was a pachinko winner!

Then came the interesting part. Since gambling isn't technically legal in Japan you have to jump through a lot of hoops to actually get your winnings. An attendant had to come and count up my winnings, then take me to the booth where they exchanged my winnings card with a gold token. They also gave me some candy which I didn't really understand. But they gave me the token and explained (or tried to explain, but luckily we had researched this in advance and were prepared for this) that I had to go to a separate place to exchange the token for cash. They technically can't tell us where to go though. But since we had researched it we knew we had to go to a TUC shop and that it would be close by, so we walked half a block and found it. then you walk in and put your token on some green felt, which is then slid under the counter, then it's slid back with your cash. Sketchy, right? And up until then I had no idea how much 444 balls was worth; that was the first point when I realized I won actual money. It wasn't much- 1,500 yen (under $15), but it meant I came out positive for the evening!

So we decided to celebrate by trying some umeshu, which is plum wine. It was really good! Super sweet. We originally went to a bar where they served it straight up. Then we went to get some dinner and decided to try yakitori, which I'm not sure how to define other than a Japanese type of skewered chicken. I got some umeshu there as well and they served it with soda water which I didn't like quite as much but made it last a bit longer. We each got some yakitori which was really good. I had it with onions as well and we got some rice. Matt had just chicken and then also some pork skewers and scallop skewers. The restaurant we went to was super small and it was on a street with a ton of other similar really tiny yakitori places. The area was called Memory Lane. Ours only sat about 11 people. And out of those 11 people, we sat right next to another Wisconsin guy!! What a small world. We talked to him a bit and he was just visiting on vacation.

Memory lane:

Yakitori:

Another successful day! Oh, and today was the first day I was able to successfully order in a restaurant by myself by shouting "sumimasen", which is how you customarily get the server's attention. It feels so rude to me to just shout out to them to get their attention, but it's how they do it here. We're starting to fit in!

Tomorrow we get to ride our first bullet train as we go to Nagano.