Saturday, November 14, 2009

パチンコの日(pachinko no hi): Day of Pachinko

Do you know pachinko? Pachinko is a Japanese gaming device used for amusement and gambling. A pachinko machine resembles a vertical pinball machine, but balls are much smaller. A ball costs about yen 4. So for yen100 you get about 25 balls. If the ball enters the certain spot, you get many balls. According to the volume of the balls, you can exchange them to daily necessaries such as foods or closings or amusement goods or household utensils or others.
According to the White paper of Leisure 2008, the population of pachinko players was 14,500,000, and of workers was 440,000. The market scale is yen22,980,000,000,000. As of July 2009, there are 13,000 pachinko parlors in Japan.
The first pachinko parlor appeared in Nagoya (名古屋) on Novmber 14, 1930. On the same day in 1966 Zenkoku yugi kyodo kumiai rengokai (全国遊技共同組合連合会), National game cooperative union (?) was established. Therefore they decided November 14 as the day of Pachinko in 1979.

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