my Japanese encyclopedia O-P
i've been at work for about 5 hours now on a saturday night--yes, fun...and i'll be back here on sunday morning, in oh, about 8 hours or so...but who's to say nothing good can't come out of it? brace yourselves, lots of writing here on a myriad of different topics...
Oba-Chan I met S' grandmother for the first time on this trip. She lives in Yokohama (as does S' parents & brother) in a high-rise that is populated mostly by senior citizens. Across the street from the high-rise is a complex with a department store (and therefore a couple of restaurants), a grocery and a few other shops, as well as the train station. A small park is also nearby for strolling about. This is how I'd like to be set up when I'm an old psyched_out. Care for the elderly really freaks me out here. None of my grandparents ever went to a nursing home (excepting my grandmother once her Alzheimer's got in its severe stages), but on the other hand my maternal grandparents lived literally next-door to my uncle and an aunt lives with my paternal grandmother. I'm an only child and honestly I don't know how things are going to work out once my parents start to get up in their age (my mom is 57 and my dad will be 62 next month). Not long after we started going out, S brought all of this up to me because it astounded her how old people are treated around here and she just assumed there had to be some things she didn't know. So she asked me about how conditions are and what the arrangements are that I have with my parents and so on. My mind was blown, and not really in a good way...
...but anyway, so I was meeting Oba-Chan. She was an extremely pleasant woman who didn't stop smiling the whole time I was in her presence. We walked across the street with her and had lunch at the restaurant in the department store (for you foodies: zaru soba with accompanying sashimi, which S thought was swordfish but may have been bonito - everyone else had ramen of some sort) and then went to the park to have some pictures made.
Oba-Chan apparently hasn't been around Americans very often in her life, so I think I was of anthropological interest in addition to my various other "qualities." Questions and comments from her: "Oh, you can use chopsticks!" "Why are so many Americans fat?" and later to Oka-San in private: "I can tell Suko-chan really loves S, because I saw one time when he held her hand!" Hand-holding or really any type of emotion is rarely seen in public in Japan...
Odd Sights yeah, so let's get down to the bottom of it, what weird things did I see this time around? I can only think of 2 eccentrics I noticed this time:
- Walking from Shibuya to Harajuku on a sunny Thursday afternoon, we walked by a park bench. We approached the bench from the backside and a 30s-ish guy was seated. As we passed the bench to the left, I saw that the guy, while wearing a shirt, had absolutely no pants or (assuming from the flesh shot I got) underwear on. He was vibrating like a madman, but he was holding onto a conveniently spread-out newspaper so I didn't witness firsthand what was going on. Amazingly, this guy didn't capture S' attention and I brought it up after we were out of harm's earsight. S told me this really wasn't an unordinary thing and that public masturbation happens quite frequently in Tokyo. Hmm, maybe this explains why you don't see many people holding hands...
- The next day we were walking around the moat of the old Edo castle when we got passed by a stocky guy (in that Japanese definition of "stocky") jogging.along the path. A common enough sight, although instead of shorts he was just wearing his ordinary white cotton briefs (and as it was a warm day, they appeared to be quite clingy). He would have made the perfect addition to the picture I was about to take featuring the moat, the old castle wall, a bridge to the area, and a swan gliding along the waters but dammit he was just too quick. Ah well...
Pachinko its much more difficult to write about pachinko than I thought. Okay, first a little background into it and then my experiences. To make a slightly incorrect generalization solely to give you some context, pachinko is a gambling game, and pachinko parlors are like casinos. Pachinko is commonly compared to pinball only that its got a vertical setup, and if you do well at it you receive credit which you can redeem at a section of the parlor that contains prizes that are slightly more upscale (although not much) than what you'd find at a skee-ball setup. If you like your games nice and legal, that's all there is to it. If, on the other hand, you want a little something more substantial, you can walk out of the pachinko area and without fail there will be a little booth just beyond the pachinko parlor's doors where a person (who you can't see) will take your credit and return with an appropriate amount of hard cash. Good deal, wouldn't you say? Too good to be true, perhaps, because its illegal. Pachinko parlors are usually synonymous with the yakuza (Japanese gangsters) and not only that but a not-indecent amount of proceeds fund North Korea (a link to this blog does a better job of explaining that I could and contains reference links). But the police let this slide, as they do so many things involving the yakuza, so you probably won't get busted if you get the chance to make some money.
And making some money is what drives the throngs of people who sit, smoke, play, and smoke inside these parlors, as they come in as soon as the doors open and stay until they're probably thrown out (because after being inside a parlor for longer than 20 minutes, you probably wouldn't be able to hear anyone without a bullhorn say "It's closing time!"). This is a serious game to them, and every guidebook laments this fact by saying "Why oh why do such an intelligent nation of people throw away their earnings on this idiotic game?" I didn't know, but I needed to find out, by God! I needed to be one of those idiots! After all, I liked pinball and who knew, I might get rich!
So pachinko had been talked about on every trip I made to Japan. But it wasn't to be the first two times I went. However, my brother-in-law Y wanted to make my dream come true, so on the last full day I had in Japan, he took me to a parlor in Yokohama that he particularly liked since it wasn't as dark and dirty as some of the other ones. I don't necessarily mind "dark and dirty", as that was part of the reason I was curious to see the insides of one of these places, but I thought it wise to take his advice since he probably knew what he was talking about. S went shopping for maternity clothes with her oka-san while we were engaged in this activity, since the cigarette smoke was reputedly lethal.
We arrived and walked into a parlor that was set up with probably about 200 pachinko machines. It sounded like the jets full of moneybags for North Korea were about to take off inside this very room. Y walked around and found 2 side-by-side vacant machines, fed each one of them 10,000 Yen (a little under $100 - the maximum amount we were instructed we could lose) and told me to sit down and start it up. I should mention that I actually had no idea how to play this game, only knowing that it was supposedly similar to pinball. I intended on watching some people for a couple of minutes first, but seeing as how I understood their motions about as well as I understood their language, I realized I probably wouldn't gain any insights. Almost 2 months later, I'm still not really sure of any insights, but I can try to describe how everything happened:
First off, to call this game fast-paced is an understatement. As soon as the money was deposited, a manic row of pinballs shot out from the screen. In fact, the balls don't stop shooting out until your money's all gone, so there's already one difference from pinball. There is something you can hold down to keep the balls from releasing (for some apparently strategic reason), but otherwise its BANG!BANG!BANG! Second, there are no flippers. Instead you have one dial you maneuver, which sort of controls where the balls are going. Y maneuvered mine for me to start until he found an apparently good spot, whereupon he got out a 100Y coin and stuck it in the dial so that it would lock in place. He then instructed me to leave it like that. At this point, I wondered exactly what I needed to do since that was the only thing that controlled the game (along with the brake that holds up the balls from being released). Thankfully Y also brought me a cold green tea from a vending machine, so I could just sit by and watch my money status slowly shrink and shrink from the display at the top of the screen (about every couple of minutes it'd drop another 5000Y). The balls were apparently trying to go into a bullseye target of sorts, and occasionally I'd be rewarded by having a pinball drop out of the machine and into a tray underneath the machine. These were how I'd receive credit in the end, although with about 2000Y left after around about 20 minutes it didn't look like I'd even have enough to get some dingy skee-ball prize. At least not compared to the chain-smoking lady next to me with her 2 trays of balls on the floor.
But in addition to the pinballs, there was a video display that featured a mermaid in a bikini and a lot of underwater scenes of animals. Occasionally a slot machine style image would come on the screen, but since there wasn't an arm for me to pull it seemed to just stop whenever it wanted to, at least from what I saw. I later learned that hitting the brake on the pachinko balls seemed to give some slight sway into how the slots dropped on the screen. I have to say, all of this made me feel like quite the moron because just about every guidebook talked about how mind-numbingly simple pachinko was, yet here I was, sitting with an industrial engineering degree from the best industrial engineering school in the whole damned USofA, and I couldn't parse what the hell this bikinied mermaid was trying to tell me. And she wasn't even speaking in Japanese! But I was still having a sensory overload from the volume (in addition to all of the noise of the machines and the rattling pachinko balls, some kind of techno/trance music blasts out of them also) and the flashing lights and the hazy smoke which already made the scene feel like a flashback...
and while I was trancing out, Y grabbed my arm because he had hit some mega-jackpot and pachinko balls were pouring out of his machine. The trays were filling up almost as fast as he could place them! He more or less pulled me up out of my seat and immediately switched places with me, so that I could benefit from this fortune. Then, within a couple of minutes he'd hit a jackpot on his new machine too! So we were both filling these trays up. All of a sudden, this game seemed to be a bit clearer now, or so I deluded myself into thinking. After about 15 minutes, the pachinko balls finally stopped their flood, but the game was still continuing on and the jackpot screen kept popping up. I finally figured out that the jackpot game was the cause for all of these winnings to occur, and it wouldn't come up until you had dropped X amount of pachinko balls in the center hole. And since the dial that controlled the pachinko balls was pretty much locked in position thanks to Y's 100Y coin based on where he thought the best placement would be, there was really nothing for me to do except await the jackpot, hold the brake button until it felt right to release it, and watch. Then, all of a sudden the flood started up again. I guess I did something right! The grizzled veteran pachinko lady next to my old spot looked in amazement as this gaijin suddenly had a winning streak going on!
Eventually Y turned to me after our streaks started to relatively dry up and we decided to end the game and cash in the remaining yen that we hadn't used. We then called the staff who came over to issue credit for us. Y walked up to the skee-ball area to get the slip from them, and they handed it to us. It contained some bogus number that didn't correspond to money. We apparently won 4 free drinks from the nearby vending machine also, and Y let me pick them so I got a couple of cold green teas and a couple of cold milk teas. Then we exited the pachinko parlor and went to the inevitable hole in the wall. Leaving the parlor was one of the more bizarre auditory trips I think I've ever had, as the pachinko room was apparently soundproofed. It was like YOU HAD BEEN LIVING YOUR WHOLE LIFE JUST LIKE THIS AND THEN (suddenly everything stopped). Y said that we would split the earnings whatever they would be. And what did they turn out to be? Over 70,000Y! That's basically over $350 apiece for a <$100 investment. And I have to say that I had only gambled one time before in my life, in Biloxi Mississippi, and I had sucked there...
We got back in Y's Mercedes high on life, and he took me to a nearby liquor store to purchase some alcohol, which he paid for with some of his earnings. And then we went back to the parents' house, got them and S and then I treated the 5 of us to dinner at S' father's favorite sushi restaurant. We only had a half-day left, so I bought some additional souvenirs for people & paid for the lunch at the airport with S & Oka-san, and I still had 20,000Y left which came back across the ocean with me. Its saved for the next trip to Japan, and just think how much I can turn that into the next time I play pachinko!
Pornography In our weekly mansion, we had a television as one would expect from such a place. When we checked in, I decided to flip it on to see what I could find. And what did I find? A couple of naked lesbians engaged in the heat of the moment, that's what I found. S walked into the room and couldn't believe what she was seeing. Now, the porn industry is huge in Japan and its not uncommon to see extremely explicit pictures propped on top of your hotel room's TV set, with information on how to order a cinematic equivalent of such. But this was the first time we'd been granted access to such a display (with it even being the first thing that came on when we turned on the TV no less). Wanting to make sure we weren't setting ourselves up for some major surcharge, S checked the little book that was left on the table with info about our room, and discovered that every room was set up with the porn channel, but they would disconnect it if you didn't want it. Now there's an interesting concept.
Now, despite living with a major porn enthusiast for many years in college and beyond (I decided not to name him since I know geebs enjoys his privacy), I've never been much into this stuff, but if it was free we may as well get something out of it. So what did we get? Its a channel of vignettes, usually no more than 10 minutes in length (I'll let you make up your own punch line for that one), with 95% of them going along this way: a guy behind the camera talking to a girl (and only one of the ones we saw had a schoolgirl outfit on, although most of them were usually "virgins") who is clothed but gets unclothed within the next 2-3 minutes (with or without someone else's help). Sometimes you see a guy, sometimes its just the camera. Oral tends to follow but the climax (guy's, natch) is always the missionary's job. Fade to white...
Now I knew this through prior knowledge (as well as my possession of a bootlegged Japanese copy of the Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain), but the interesting thing is that penises are not allowed to be seen. Not just on TV, but in any of the films you buy, or any of the magazines you might find in stores. Despite having a yearly celebration of the phallus, the Japanese do not want to see any guys in the all together when it comes to these matters. Cum is okay, but you always see it being shot out of some digitally altered shaft that makes it look like its hiding from the yakuza. I think women can be full frontal, or at least I seem to remember it being that way (the camera didn't flinch around them). Honestly I couldn't watch more than 20 minutes of this stuff without feeling slightly nauseous so I apologize if your taboo-meter demands more. But don't worry, nakedness abounds in the next entry too!
Public Baths [Disclaimer: to those of you who'd rather not visualize me naked, you might want to stop your reading now - my apologies and prayers to those of you who carry on, for you must indeed be some righteously sick bastards] In 2002 I went to a public bath with S' father (Oto-san). I had been looking forward to it much to the shock of some of my American friends. They exclaimed "Why on earth do you want to do such a thing? You know that everybody's going to be staring at you!" But surprisingly, that really didn't matter to me. Odd, since I spent my adolescence never stripping off more than my t-shirt when I'd go to the beach, yet here I was all set to go members only in a foreign country with a man I had met less than a week prior but was now my father-in-law! But I think the foreign aspect gave it a lot of the appeal, since I ultimately realized "y'know, regardless of whether they think its big or small or whatever, why should I worry about what a bunch of guys who I'll never meet again think of my cock?" And more importantly, even if I did have any reason to think about it, the idea of being in one of those legendary hot Japanese baths (and I love me some hot baths) trumped any self-conscious feelings I may have had. And as it turned out, we went at a time when nobody else was there so I was able to just relax and listen to Oto-San as he instructed me on the proper public bath procedure (and no, we didn't check each other out - my Lord, you're even sicker than I thought!).
This time around, I didn't plan to specifically visit a bathhouse but the ryokan that we stayed in during our Kyoto trip had a bath available. Baths are one of the luxuries that nice ryokans offer, as they provide the perfect retreat after the culinary orgasms of a kaiseki ryori meal. And I planned to hit the bath on the first night after dinner, but our busy first-day schedule and the kaiseki courses left me comatose. On the next night I was ready though. After dinner, S, Oka-san, and I were dressed in our yukatas and we walked down the hallway before separating into the gender-oriented baths. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly freaked out.
I was principally concerned about my being alone. Last time, Oto-San was there to tell me what I needed to do. And I thought I remembered everything he said (at least I knew the basics), but still I had some fear that I'd unknowingly break some unwritten rule like step into the bath right-foot first or something arcane like that. And it was comforting having someone I knew there with me, especially since I was a stranger in a strange land. But I was a grown-up and I could handle whatever situation I found myself in, so I breathed a deep breath and walked into the bath...
...to which I found myself alone. Yet again. Slightly relieved, I stripped off in the locker area, put on the public bath slippers, and wandered into the central bath area. There, I proceeded to soap myself up and dump buckets of water over my head in short intervals. Yep, I remembered the basics. And after getting that whole cleanliness thing out of the way (because the Japanese use baths purely for soaking, not for cleaning, as all right-thinking people should), I sank into the bath, drifting away into bliss...until about 5 minutes later when the door opened and a couple more guys stepped in. After a silly reactionary "Hey, this is my bath!" feeling, I saw that these guys were white and I was slightly relieved, not for any racial sentiments but just because I knew that they were probably on equal footing with me concerning public bath skills so I couldn't offend them. And seeing as how the three of us were destined to be in a small room with no clothing, we decided to introduce ourselves. The guys were both French, from Lyon, and they spoke very good English. I told them I had just visited France a few months prior, but I said something akin to "my French really sucks" in their tongue and we carried on a bit about how lovely Kyoto was. I mentioned that Japan was my favorite country in the world, which surprised them due to the words coming out of an American's mouth, so I then felt almost justified to rant and rave about everything I find wrong with America's leadership right now. It feels a little awkward to think back about it now and I think I overdid my "I hate Bush thiiiiiis much" routine but I had to get my point across to the international crowd I guess...Eventually I came back to earth and remembered that I was sitting in a bath that was now starting to get scalding so I ended my political chat with them by standing up, giving them a shot of my nude American body in the process as if to say "hey my brothers, we're all the same aren't we?", and wandering out to get toweled off.
And not a moment too soon as all of a sudden, as soon as I was starting to put my yukata back on, the door swung open and about 8 adolescent Japanese students burst in making a huge commotion. I have to say, it would've driven me into a slight neurotic panic if I had been in there any longer, so I quickly attempted to make myself up, my yukata half adjusted, and I wandered out of the bath. Almost immediately after stepping out, I saw a freight train of adolescent girls headed for their respective bath, and I inadvertently caused one of the girls to scream. I don't know if that was due to "Oh my God, get a look of that hot wet American who's almost halfway out of his clothes!" or "Blecch, they still make gaijins with chest hair?" Use your own imagination...But I was able to eventually adjust my clothes, and soon afterward S and Oka-San came out of the bath too. I bought myself a beer from the hotel's vending machine for the final reflection, and I then retired in our room all relaxed and 30 different shades of pink...pretty ridiculous to be a 29-year-old and proud that I made it through a bath on my own, but then again I'm a pretty ridiculous 29-year-old as it is...
Oba-Chan I met S' grandmother for the first time on this trip. She lives in Yokohama (as does S' parents & brother) in a high-rise that is populated mostly by senior citizens. Across the street from the high-rise is a complex with a department store (and therefore a couple of restaurants), a grocery and a few other shops, as well as the train station. A small park is also nearby for strolling about. This is how I'd like to be set up when I'm an old psyched_out. Care for the elderly really freaks me out here. None of my grandparents ever went to a nursing home (excepting my grandmother once her Alzheimer's got in its severe stages), but on the other hand my maternal grandparents lived literally next-door to my uncle and an aunt lives with my paternal grandmother. I'm an only child and honestly I don't know how things are going to work out once my parents start to get up in their age (my mom is 57 and my dad will be 62 next month). Not long after we started going out, S brought all of this up to me because it astounded her how old people are treated around here and she just assumed there had to be some things she didn't know. So she asked me about how conditions are and what the arrangements are that I have with my parents and so on. My mind was blown, and not really in a good way...
...but anyway, so I was meeting Oba-Chan. She was an extremely pleasant woman who didn't stop smiling the whole time I was in her presence. We walked across the street with her and had lunch at the restaurant in the department store (for you foodies: zaru soba with accompanying sashimi, which S thought was swordfish but may have been bonito - everyone else had ramen of some sort) and then went to the park to have some pictures made.
Oba-Chan apparently hasn't been around Americans very often in her life, so I think I was of anthropological interest in addition to my various other "qualities." Questions and comments from her: "Oh, you can use chopsticks!" "Why are so many Americans fat?" and later to Oka-San in private: "I can tell Suko-chan really loves S, because I saw one time when he held her hand!" Hand-holding or really any type of emotion is rarely seen in public in Japan...
Odd Sights yeah, so let's get down to the bottom of it, what weird things did I see this time around? I can only think of 2 eccentrics I noticed this time:
- Walking from Shibuya to Harajuku on a sunny Thursday afternoon, we walked by a park bench. We approached the bench from the backside and a 30s-ish guy was seated. As we passed the bench to the left, I saw that the guy, while wearing a shirt, had absolutely no pants or (assuming from the flesh shot I got) underwear on. He was vibrating like a madman, but he was holding onto a conveniently spread-out newspaper so I didn't witness firsthand what was going on. Amazingly, this guy didn't capture S' attention and I brought it up after we were out of harm's earsight. S told me this really wasn't an unordinary thing and that public masturbation happens quite frequently in Tokyo. Hmm, maybe this explains why you don't see many people holding hands...
- The next day we were walking around the moat of the old Edo castle when we got passed by a stocky guy (in that Japanese definition of "stocky") jogging.along the path. A common enough sight, although instead of shorts he was just wearing his ordinary white cotton briefs (and as it was a warm day, they appeared to be quite clingy). He would have made the perfect addition to the picture I was about to take featuring the moat, the old castle wall, a bridge to the area, and a swan gliding along the waters but dammit he was just too quick. Ah well...
Pachinko its much more difficult to write about pachinko than I thought. Okay, first a little background into it and then my experiences. To make a slightly incorrect generalization solely to give you some context, pachinko is a gambling game, and pachinko parlors are like casinos. Pachinko is commonly compared to pinball only that its got a vertical setup, and if you do well at it you receive credit which you can redeem at a section of the parlor that contains prizes that are slightly more upscale (although not much) than what you'd find at a skee-ball setup. If you like your games nice and legal, that's all there is to it. If, on the other hand, you want a little something more substantial, you can walk out of the pachinko area and without fail there will be a little booth just beyond the pachinko parlor's doors where a person (who you can't see) will take your credit and return with an appropriate amount of hard cash. Good deal, wouldn't you say? Too good to be true, perhaps, because its illegal. Pachinko parlors are usually synonymous with the yakuza (Japanese gangsters) and not only that but a not-indecent amount of proceeds fund North Korea (a link to this blog does a better job of explaining that I could and contains reference links). But the police let this slide, as they do so many things involving the yakuza, so you probably won't get busted if you get the chance to make some money.
And making some money is what drives the throngs of people who sit, smoke, play, and smoke inside these parlors, as they come in as soon as the doors open and stay until they're probably thrown out (because after being inside a parlor for longer than 20 minutes, you probably wouldn't be able to hear anyone without a bullhorn say "It's closing time!"). This is a serious game to them, and every guidebook laments this fact by saying "Why oh why do such an intelligent nation of people throw away their earnings on this idiotic game?" I didn't know, but I needed to find out, by God! I needed to be one of those idiots! After all, I liked pinball and who knew, I might get rich!
So pachinko had been talked about on every trip I made to Japan. But it wasn't to be the first two times I went. However, my brother-in-law Y wanted to make my dream come true, so on the last full day I had in Japan, he took me to a parlor in Yokohama that he particularly liked since it wasn't as dark and dirty as some of the other ones. I don't necessarily mind "dark and dirty", as that was part of the reason I was curious to see the insides of one of these places, but I thought it wise to take his advice since he probably knew what he was talking about. S went shopping for maternity clothes with her oka-san while we were engaged in this activity, since the cigarette smoke was reputedly lethal.
We arrived and walked into a parlor that was set up with probably about 200 pachinko machines. It sounded like the jets full of moneybags for North Korea were about to take off inside this very room. Y walked around and found 2 side-by-side vacant machines, fed each one of them 10,000 Yen (a little under $100 - the maximum amount we were instructed we could lose) and told me to sit down and start it up. I should mention that I actually had no idea how to play this game, only knowing that it was supposedly similar to pinball. I intended on watching some people for a couple of minutes first, but seeing as how I understood their motions about as well as I understood their language, I realized I probably wouldn't gain any insights. Almost 2 months later, I'm still not really sure of any insights, but I can try to describe how everything happened:
First off, to call this game fast-paced is an understatement. As soon as the money was deposited, a manic row of pinballs shot out from the screen. In fact, the balls don't stop shooting out until your money's all gone, so there's already one difference from pinball. There is something you can hold down to keep the balls from releasing (for some apparently strategic reason), but otherwise its BANG!BANG!BANG! Second, there are no flippers. Instead you have one dial you maneuver, which sort of controls where the balls are going. Y maneuvered mine for me to start until he found an apparently good spot, whereupon he got out a 100Y coin and stuck it in the dial so that it would lock in place. He then instructed me to leave it like that. At this point, I wondered exactly what I needed to do since that was the only thing that controlled the game (along with the brake that holds up the balls from being released). Thankfully Y also brought me a cold green tea from a vending machine, so I could just sit by and watch my money status slowly shrink and shrink from the display at the top of the screen (about every couple of minutes it'd drop another 5000Y). The balls were apparently trying to go into a bullseye target of sorts, and occasionally I'd be rewarded by having a pinball drop out of the machine and into a tray underneath the machine. These were how I'd receive credit in the end, although with about 2000Y left after around about 20 minutes it didn't look like I'd even have enough to get some dingy skee-ball prize. At least not compared to the chain-smoking lady next to me with her 2 trays of balls on the floor.
But in addition to the pinballs, there was a video display that featured a mermaid in a bikini and a lot of underwater scenes of animals. Occasionally a slot machine style image would come on the screen, but since there wasn't an arm for me to pull it seemed to just stop whenever it wanted to, at least from what I saw. I later learned that hitting the brake on the pachinko balls seemed to give some slight sway into how the slots dropped on the screen. I have to say, all of this made me feel like quite the moron because just about every guidebook talked about how mind-numbingly simple pachinko was, yet here I was, sitting with an industrial engineering degree from the best industrial engineering school in the whole damned USofA, and I couldn't parse what the hell this bikinied mermaid was trying to tell me. And she wasn't even speaking in Japanese! But I was still having a sensory overload from the volume (in addition to all of the noise of the machines and the rattling pachinko balls, some kind of techno/trance music blasts out of them also) and the flashing lights and the hazy smoke which already made the scene feel like a flashback...
and while I was trancing out, Y grabbed my arm because he had hit some mega-jackpot and pachinko balls were pouring out of his machine. The trays were filling up almost as fast as he could place them! He more or less pulled me up out of my seat and immediately switched places with me, so that I could benefit from this fortune. Then, within a couple of minutes he'd hit a jackpot on his new machine too! So we were both filling these trays up. All of a sudden, this game seemed to be a bit clearer now, or so I deluded myself into thinking. After about 15 minutes, the pachinko balls finally stopped their flood, but the game was still continuing on and the jackpot screen kept popping up. I finally figured out that the jackpot game was the cause for all of these winnings to occur, and it wouldn't come up until you had dropped X amount of pachinko balls in the center hole. And since the dial that controlled the pachinko balls was pretty much locked in position thanks to Y's 100Y coin based on where he thought the best placement would be, there was really nothing for me to do except await the jackpot, hold the brake button until it felt right to release it, and watch. Then, all of a sudden the flood started up again. I guess I did something right! The grizzled veteran pachinko lady next to my old spot looked in amazement as this gaijin suddenly had a winning streak going on!
Eventually Y turned to me after our streaks started to relatively dry up and we decided to end the game and cash in the remaining yen that we hadn't used. We then called the staff who came over to issue credit for us. Y walked up to the skee-ball area to get the slip from them, and they handed it to us. It contained some bogus number that didn't correspond to money. We apparently won 4 free drinks from the nearby vending machine also, and Y let me pick them so I got a couple of cold green teas and a couple of cold milk teas. Then we exited the pachinko parlor and went to the inevitable hole in the wall. Leaving the parlor was one of the more bizarre auditory trips I think I've ever had, as the pachinko room was apparently soundproofed. It was like YOU HAD BEEN LIVING YOUR WHOLE LIFE JUST LIKE THIS AND THEN (suddenly everything stopped). Y said that we would split the earnings whatever they would be. And what did they turn out to be? Over 70,000Y! That's basically over $350 apiece for a <$100 investment. And I have to say that I had only gambled one time before in my life, in Biloxi Mississippi, and I had sucked there...
We got back in Y's Mercedes high on life, and he took me to a nearby liquor store to purchase some alcohol, which he paid for with some of his earnings. And then we went back to the parents' house, got them and S and then I treated the 5 of us to dinner at S' father's favorite sushi restaurant. We only had a half-day left, so I bought some additional souvenirs for people & paid for the lunch at the airport with S & Oka-san, and I still had 20,000Y left which came back across the ocean with me. Its saved for the next trip to Japan, and just think how much I can turn that into the next time I play pachinko!
Pornography In our weekly mansion, we had a television as one would expect from such a place. When we checked in, I decided to flip it on to see what I could find. And what did I find? A couple of naked lesbians engaged in the heat of the moment, that's what I found. S walked into the room and couldn't believe what she was seeing. Now, the porn industry is huge in Japan and its not uncommon to see extremely explicit pictures propped on top of your hotel room's TV set, with information on how to order a cinematic equivalent of such. But this was the first time we'd been granted access to such a display (with it even being the first thing that came on when we turned on the TV no less). Wanting to make sure we weren't setting ourselves up for some major surcharge, S checked the little book that was left on the table with info about our room, and discovered that every room was set up with the porn channel, but they would disconnect it if you didn't want it. Now there's an interesting concept.
Now, despite living with a major porn enthusiast for many years in college and beyond (I decided not to name him since I know geebs enjoys his privacy), I've never been much into this stuff, but if it was free we may as well get something out of it. So what did we get? Its a channel of vignettes, usually no more than 10 minutes in length (I'll let you make up your own punch line for that one), with 95% of them going along this way: a guy behind the camera talking to a girl (and only one of the ones we saw had a schoolgirl outfit on, although most of them were usually "virgins") who is clothed but gets unclothed within the next 2-3 minutes (with or without someone else's help). Sometimes you see a guy, sometimes its just the camera. Oral tends to follow but the climax (guy's, natch) is always the missionary's job. Fade to white...
Now I knew this through prior knowledge (as well as my possession of a bootlegged Japanese copy of the Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain), but the interesting thing is that penises are not allowed to be seen. Not just on TV, but in any of the films you buy, or any of the magazines you might find in stores. Despite having a yearly celebration of the phallus, the Japanese do not want to see any guys in the all together when it comes to these matters. Cum is okay, but you always see it being shot out of some digitally altered shaft that makes it look like its hiding from the yakuza. I think women can be full frontal, or at least I seem to remember it being that way (the camera didn't flinch around them). Honestly I couldn't watch more than 20 minutes of this stuff without feeling slightly nauseous so I apologize if your taboo-meter demands more. But don't worry, nakedness abounds in the next entry too!
Public Baths [Disclaimer: to those of you who'd rather not visualize me naked, you might want to stop your reading now - my apologies and prayers to those of you who carry on, for you must indeed be some righteously sick bastards] In 2002 I went to a public bath with S' father (Oto-san). I had been looking forward to it much to the shock of some of my American friends. They exclaimed "Why on earth do you want to do such a thing? You know that everybody's going to be staring at you!" But surprisingly, that really didn't matter to me. Odd, since I spent my adolescence never stripping off more than my t-shirt when I'd go to the beach, yet here I was all set to go members only in a foreign country with a man I had met less than a week prior but was now my father-in-law! But I think the foreign aspect gave it a lot of the appeal, since I ultimately realized "y'know, regardless of whether they think its big or small or whatever, why should I worry about what a bunch of guys who I'll never meet again think of my cock?" And more importantly, even if I did have any reason to think about it, the idea of being in one of those legendary hot Japanese baths (and I love me some hot baths) trumped any self-conscious feelings I may have had. And as it turned out, we went at a time when nobody else was there so I was able to just relax and listen to Oto-San as he instructed me on the proper public bath procedure (and no, we didn't check each other out - my Lord, you're even sicker than I thought!).
This time around, I didn't plan to specifically visit a bathhouse but the ryokan that we stayed in during our Kyoto trip had a bath available. Baths are one of the luxuries that nice ryokans offer, as they provide the perfect retreat after the culinary orgasms of a kaiseki ryori meal. And I planned to hit the bath on the first night after dinner, but our busy first-day schedule and the kaiseki courses left me comatose. On the next night I was ready though. After dinner, S, Oka-san, and I were dressed in our yukatas and we walked down the hallway before separating into the gender-oriented baths. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly freaked out.
I was principally concerned about my being alone. Last time, Oto-San was there to tell me what I needed to do. And I thought I remembered everything he said (at least I knew the basics), but still I had some fear that I'd unknowingly break some unwritten rule like step into the bath right-foot first or something arcane like that. And it was comforting having someone I knew there with me, especially since I was a stranger in a strange land. But I was a grown-up and I could handle whatever situation I found myself in, so I breathed a deep breath and walked into the bath...
...to which I found myself alone. Yet again. Slightly relieved, I stripped off in the locker area, put on the public bath slippers, and wandered into the central bath area. There, I proceeded to soap myself up and dump buckets of water over my head in short intervals. Yep, I remembered the basics. And after getting that whole cleanliness thing out of the way (because the Japanese use baths purely for soaking, not for cleaning, as all right-thinking people should), I sank into the bath, drifting away into bliss...until about 5 minutes later when the door opened and a couple more guys stepped in. After a silly reactionary "Hey, this is my bath!" feeling, I saw that these guys were white and I was slightly relieved, not for any racial sentiments but just because I knew that they were probably on equal footing with me concerning public bath skills so I couldn't offend them. And seeing as how the three of us were destined to be in a small room with no clothing, we decided to introduce ourselves. The guys were both French, from Lyon, and they spoke very good English. I told them I had just visited France a few months prior, but I said something akin to "my French really sucks" in their tongue and we carried on a bit about how lovely Kyoto was. I mentioned that Japan was my favorite country in the world, which surprised them due to the words coming out of an American's mouth, so I then felt almost justified to rant and rave about everything I find wrong with America's leadership right now. It feels a little awkward to think back about it now and I think I overdid my "I hate Bush thiiiiiis much" routine but I had to get my point across to the international crowd I guess...Eventually I came back to earth and remembered that I was sitting in a bath that was now starting to get scalding so I ended my political chat with them by standing up, giving them a shot of my nude American body in the process as if to say "hey my brothers, we're all the same aren't we?", and wandering out to get toweled off.
And not a moment too soon as all of a sudden, as soon as I was starting to put my yukata back on, the door swung open and about 8 adolescent Japanese students burst in making a huge commotion. I have to say, it would've driven me into a slight neurotic panic if I had been in there any longer, so I quickly attempted to make myself up, my yukata half adjusted, and I wandered out of the bath. Almost immediately after stepping out, I saw a freight train of adolescent girls headed for their respective bath, and I inadvertently caused one of the girls to scream. I don't know if that was due to "Oh my God, get a look of that hot wet American who's almost halfway out of his clothes!" or "Blecch, they still make gaijins with chest hair?" Use your own imagination...But I was able to eventually adjust my clothes, and soon afterward S and Oka-San came out of the bath too. I bought myself a beer from the hotel's vending machine for the final reflection, and I then retired in our room all relaxed and 30 different shades of pink...pretty ridiculous to be a 29-year-old and proud that I made it through a bath on my own, but then again I'm a pretty ridiculous 29-year-old as it is...