Road Trip Report: Tokyo Pachinko Museum
Last week my wife and I used my frequent flyer miles to visit Japan for 6 days: 2 in Tokyo, 1 in Takayama and 3 in Kyoto. Of course we had to visit the famous Pachinko Museum in Tokyo that logicprobe so nicely discovered in the Japan Times article in August: http://www.pachitalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6556&highlight=pachinko+museum
You may notice there’s no address in the article. It’s “in the middle of Tokyo's Higashi-Ueno district near JR Ueno Station.”
So we walk north northeast from Ueno Station and see a few pachinko parlor supply distributors’ offices. Gathering courage, I entered one and asked the gentleman inside “Sumimasen, Pachinko Hakubutsukan Kudasai” (stop laughing rupan777!) Luckily I printed out the Japan Times article, since Japanese do pretty well with printed English, and when he saw the key words, he smiled, motioned me outside, locked the shop, and led us personally three blocks to the museum.
And that is why we went to Japan. Sure, I wanted to see this place, but we went because I had briefly visited a dozen years before and found it fascinating, with wonderful helpful people and a sense of, well, tranquility that comes from most everything generally working as it should. Lots of people, yes, but somehow still serene. On our trip I witnessed exactly one thing not working properly: a sink in a (western) bathroom in Takayama. Oh, and our train Takayama-Kyoto was one minute late to arrive. I don’t want to exaggerate.
You go up the elevator to the museum. It’s free, but no pictures allowed (I hear the collective groans of all of you). I was hoping most especially to take pictures of the earliest machines: the earliest from 1946 with pins evenly distributed, and the 5 or so early hand-built (and decorated) from the early Masamura Gauge period. Then there are another half dozen or so one-ball machines (some you see on eBay), and maybe a dozen manual machines (you’ve seen most of these on eBay). Compirate, you can be proud. Then the machines continue with mid 70’s and later electric shooter models into the 90’s (over 100 examples…most rarely seen here). You can’t play them (except three in the front), and some are just the cels.
The space is compact, as you’d expect, and there’s nice labeling in Japanese, which of course I can’t read-except the release date, which helped. If I had happened by when the Mr. Makino was there I might have had better luck with my photo request…and certainly it would have been an interesting visit!
The main revelations: the early hand-painted machines, rather amateurishly decorated…it didn’t take too long for more modern manufacturing to take hold. And seeing such a range of machines from the 80’s and 90’s was quite interesting…though visual overload takes over when you can’t read the captions. Finally, it was fascinating to see the much-discussed playfield water damage on the early machines in the collection…if it doesn’t bother Mr. Makino it shouldn’t bother us!
Two postscripts.
1) In Tokyo and Kyoto main business streets, there is a pachinko parlor (50-200 machines on average) on nearly EVERY block. Usually one floor pachinko, one pachislo. We were both a little surprised at this density…even though we knew they’d be around. The first parlor I entered contained almost an entire ground floor of http://www.p-world.co.jp/_machine/kisyu.cgi?kisyu=p3966. Easily 100+ of them. Around 1/3 in use in the middle of a weekday. No waiting.
2) In Kyoto, in a 8 floor super-arcade, 1/3 of 1 floor was devoted to coin-operated no-ball-handling pachinkos…about 40 machines…from 1998 to the present. Sealed ball trays, cyclic operation. 100 yen here (in a coin slot) gets 200 balls (I think)...shown on a counter unit on the coin acceptor on the right side of the machine. It tracks winnings; you play until you run out. Much cheaper than standard, but you can’t win cash…just more play time…unless there’s something I didn’t know! They had Evangelion and Star Wars, for example, but of course not the very newest machines. We didn’t see children playing here, though.
Sorry for the long post, but at least I wanted to encourage those who will come after. Get your Japan Rail Pass, discount winter air tickets, and enjoy!
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