| | I opted to go church today with Masa and his family, so I woke up early
and took the train to Haijima (close to his church). I hung around with
them until about 5 pm, and took advantage of that time to take pictures
of my favorite places in Akishima! Uh...you shouldn't be surprised that some of
those places have to do with toys and games!
First, here's a picture of Masa's church:
You can see that it's dwarfed by the surrounding apartment buildings.
Unusual shape for a church, huh? Doesn't really matter, though, long as
it has people in it. After church, Masa's family took me out to eat
again at one of the best places ever:
Sushiro! Yes!! Masa's sister needed to check on prices of PSPs for her brother, so we next stopped at A-Too,
the place where I bought most of my Famicom games. So far, I haven't
found better prices anywhere in Japan. Also, take a look at their awesome selection! On to the next stop:
Bell House is, quite simply, the best toy store on the face of the
earth. If they also carried used toys, it would absolutely perfect.
Similar to A-Too, I never found a toy store which had awesome prices
and selection like Bell House anywhere else in Japan, despite being
taken to numerous toy stores by Kensuke. Pictures of the inside:
   
Left to right: A wall of Ultraman and similar characters; a selection of kaiju (monsters,
these ones from Ultraman); massively discounted Zoids section; on the
second floor, more Gundam kits than you'll ever need. Not pictured:
Transformers section, similarly covered in discounts; videogames
section; collector toy section; polite employees; people playing
Yu-Gi-Oh or something on the second floor; my face going crazy the
first time I went in here. You should be proud of me that I didn't
spent my entire trip's money in this store.
Finally, we have Tsutaya. I didn't take a picture of it from the
outside, but Tsutaya is the place I rented movies throughout my stay in
Akishima. They have a gigantic selection of Japanese superhero shows, which I love, as well as every Godzilla movie,
except for the one with Mechagodzilla from the 90s. They also have a
ton of anime, of which the only kind I rented was the kind with giant
robots. Not to mention their massive selection of CDs for rent. Over
the course of my stay, I rented, copied, and added subtitles to 13
Godzilla/daikaiju (giant
monster) movies which either didn't have a good release in America or
hadn't been released at all. It was pretty exciting.
I then hung out with Masa and his family in their apartment until about
five. Their apartment, of course, is among my favorite places from
Japan, but I didn't take any new pictures of it. Kensuke is always
talking about how there is "really nothing" in Akishima, but it seems
to me I found the best stuff there, not to mention the best Japanese
family ever.
Oh, but wait! The entry's not over yet! Special bonus section: Pachinko!!
There's this thing in Japan, called Pachinko. It's kind of a form of
pinball, but less fun, which people play for money. Saying that
Pachinko parlors are abundant in Japan is like saying there's a lot of
hair on a gorilla. I dare you to find a town which has less than ten
parlors. I think there are fifty or sixty, probably more, in Hachioji
alone. Well anyway, the point of me saying all this is that Kensuke
took me to a nearby parlor tonight to show me what it's all about.
Following is the true account.
I can show you some pictures, but experiencing pachinko requires
generous use of all five senses. For one thing, if you get anywhere
near a pachinko joint, you will smell bowling-alley grade cigarette
smoke. People smoke in those places, a lot.
Actually, I was expecting to find the ceiling obscured by a low haze of
smoke judging by the smell, but somehow they manage to keep the whole
place looking shiny and new.
After parking on a second-story parking deck, Kensuke took me in
through the automatic front doors. What I was immediately met by can
only be described as a wall of
sound. This sound was caused by approximately 15.7 gajillion little
shiny metal balls tumbling endlessly through the isle-shaped units
forming the pachinko machines. The use of fake numbers is necessary to
describe just how ridiculously many little metal balls were falling at
all times. I think if you took all the pachinko balls in japan and
melted them into one big sphere, it would alter the earth's gravity
substantially.
Sorry for the people-obscured pic, I was kind of wary of taking
pictures in there and getting pelted with pachinko balls by a
cross-faced old woman or something.
So the basis of pachinko goes like this: you feed 1000 yen (about $10)
to the slot-shaped mouth on the side of the machine. This causes the
pachinko balls to start firing inside the machine, and a little knob on
the lower right corner controls their trajectory. Their fall is
hindered by a myriad of carefully-placed pins, which they bounce off of
in a chaotic fashion. Most of the balls fall down the hole at the
bottom of the machine, where they are probably recycled into the
Massive Ball Tumbler deep within the heart of the building. Some of
them fall into a little mouth above that hole, which causes the slots
on the video screen behind the balls to start spinning. If the slots
match up, balls come out of the machine and pour into a waiting tray
underneath it. The more balls you get, the more money you win.
Here is an Evangelion-themed machine, and here is Super Sea Story, the latest and most popular machine. It's one of the more annoying things I've ever seen.
Kensuke spent something like 4000 yen and got nothing. I spent nothing and got a free pachinko ball from the floor! Woo-hee!
One more entry to be made in Japan! (note: I'm going to continue this journal)
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| | Posted 7/9/2006 11:27 AM - 1 View - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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