Japan Culture #1- Game Centres & Pachinkos

Tuesday after Japanese class in the morning, walked back to the dorm with HY and by chance Hiro, the English Conversation Club's president, happened to be walking behind us. Said the "hi"s and the intros, and turns out that like me, he still had class a period after, and he was on his way to the game centre - aka arcade - so I decided to tag along. Arcades are not a place that I frequent, maybe like just only once a year if I happen to be so free after a movie or something. This was quite interesting though! Japan has some machines that seem so 'high-tech' for arcade games like horse betting game (you're the bookie, and plastic horses actually run around a miniature toy track), and the simulator flight fighting game (where you sit in the cockpit capsule with surround sound and digital), and the card game (where you use real cards with chips embedded in them to connect to the game machine), and many many more. Did not have my usual game of Bishi Bashi though.

Hiro was a great host/tour guide and entertained me throughout even though I was prepared to just watch him play whatever he wanted to play. So we tried DDR (Dance Dance Revolution - the one where you have to step and dance according to the arrows on the screen) and I was so bad at it I got grade "D" for beginner's level 3! Despite the DDR craze back in Secondary School, I've never ever tried it, so unsurprisingly I couldn't coordinate my 2 left feet. Then it was race car driving, except it's not the usual race track Daytona, but like mountainous road as though in Initial D. Hiro was way ahead of me; and the replay showed me bumping the car from side to side throughout the WHOLE way - evidently I'm not too good a mountain road driver. Rest of the time was spent looking and learning about the other interesting arcade games.

Seems like game centres are everywhere in Japan though, almost like Pachinko areas. Interesting how Pachinko is like the "public" gambling though not exactly gambling, since you only win items like pens etc, and you have to go to another shop to exchange such items for money - ie, your winnings. What a roundabout way haha.