Pachinko is a mechanical game originating in Japan. If you have been to Japan once or read from guidebooks or somewhere, you probably surprised that Japan has Pachinko everywhere!


My friend visited me last week, we went to shopping in the day time. After dinner, she asked me about how to play Pachinko… She doesn’t speak any Japanese, her boyfriend either, so she was wondering I can go with them and do some translate for them.

To be honest, I have no experience about it! Till the day I went to the place with my friend. We went to the Pachinko place in Shinjuku after 21:30, it was after dinner, I don’t know the exactly time it was actually.


At first, I sat there and check the manual which was hanging on the Pachinko machine. My friend did put the coins in for me. All of us have no idea, till the staff, who works there, notice we don’t know how to play it and we are foreigners.

He is trying to tell us how to play it, he hold the knob which you can turn it to right side or left side. And told me just hold it. (He doesn’t speak English, just said, OK! But I know it means I shouldn’t move.) 

You know, the funny thing happened! I did nothing, and the balls keep falling out from the machine. I still hold the knob, my friend and her boyfriend helped me to change the box which is for the balls.

We were busy, and the staff saw it, he was in a hurry back to our seat and help us to do change the box. Also, he told us, there is a call button on the top of machine, we don’t need to change the box by ourselves, they can do it for us.

After about 20min or 30min, we gained many boxes of balls. Many guests in Pachinko place were watching us. I think, it maybe because our boxes were more than theirs, and we just start to play about 30min.

I took this photo after I back from the restroom. We won the balls more than this photo, because my friend gained a lot as well, it was after. It’s amazing!!!

After another 30min, the staff came to our seat, and wrote the time on his hand. Yeah, it’s time to close the shop. It was 22:40, and they close at 22:45. He bring all of our balls to their counter, check how many balls we got. And gave us these tickets with numbers.


After waited in line, they took these 2 tickets away, and gave us some tokens. Of course, we don’t know how it works…

The staffs there were so friendly, they told us to follow another staff, and he lead us to a shop to exchange to money from the tokens.

You know what!!! We got 23000yen!!!
I have asked my friend, how much we spent. They told me, just about 1500yen or 1600yen, under 2000yen. But we got 23000yen back! How lucky we were!

I’m not telling you how to gain the money from Pachinko, just want to sharing the experienced what I had. If you are interested in have an experience of Pachinko, I would love to tell you how to play it. Even the design of machines are different, but I still believe the way to play is same or very similar!

Alice

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*Dorm
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