One of the things we noticed right away as we walked around Tokyo was the Japanese love their cellphones — even more than Americans or Europeans. But you rarely hear them talking on them, undoubtedly because it’s intrusive and just plain rude.
In fact, talking on a cellphone in public places like buses or trains is prohibited. It’s not something you will get arrested for, but you will be chastised and told to cease and desist, and if you persist, you will be asked to leave.
The Japanese — especially the younger generation — are quietly absorbed with their myriad of devices and all new eateries have USB ports at every table. And you need that because while Internet service is absolutely seamless wherever you go throughout Japan, you soon discover that it drains your phone like an insatiable power vampire. I’m not sure why the battery life is so short in Japan, but it’s a daily fact of life. We carried spare batteries and cords for charging on the go because without them our phones would have been dead by noon each day.
Young Japanese men are also fanatical about video games. There are noisy, multi-floor pachinko parlors (gaming arcades) in every major shopping area. They are usually yellow and red and have flashing lights to catch your attention. The parlors open at nine each morning, and by 8:30, there is usually a line of men, waiting to get inside and play. And it’s just men. Apparently either the Japanese women don’t like to play, or they aren’t welcome.
According to an expert gamer named Dan Taipua, “The general floor layout will look like this, with a little variation depending on the size of the building:
- First floor: Prize games, crane games, and UFO catchers for stuffed toys, candy etc.
- Second Floor: Medal games, casino like machines played for tokens including horse racing simulators
- Third floor: Video games, fighting games and occasional puzzle and card games
- Fourth floor: Large simulator games, racing, robot battle pods, music and rhythm games
- Fifth floor: ‘Purikura’, photobooths with printable stickers etc.”
Technically, gaming is not considered gambling because you don’t win any money. But on some machines you receive gold tokens which you can take to another store off premises that are usually owned by the arcade and exchange your token for actual money. It reminded me of how the Dutch can say drugs and prostitution are illegal when they license both.
According to several gamers I talked to, Japan leads the world in cutting edge gaming technology. From the street, it just looked like mindless button pressing, dipstick jerking, and loud noise to me, much like any gambling casino in Las Vegas.
And speaking of gambling, it is quite popular in Japan, though it’s only legal to wager on horse, motorcycle, and bicycle races. Betting on the horse racing is big business in Japan, and there are three huge racetracks on the outskirts of Tokyo. We saw ticket machines all around the major cities.
One Saturday we were checking out the mob scene around Asakusa, one of Tokyo’s biggest shopping areas filled with open-air stalls similar to the market areas of the Edo Period in 1700s. And just outside the Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon, we stopped to eat some fish on a stick and dumplings. Sitting all around us were older men reading over-sized newspapers which were actually horse racing forms. The men were reviewing the racing sheets and constantly placing bets on each race underway at one of the tracks. There were parlay betting slips at each table. They would walk inside, place a bet with the owner, and then return to the table to start reviewing the next race. Fun was being had by one and all.
In Osaka, I came upon a huge gaming festival over by the Umeda Sky Building where they are building the new Osaka Train Station for the 2020 Summer Olympics. The place was mobbed with young players. And when it started raining lightly, they still kept playing. They were totally oblivious.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the Japanese are obsessed with electronics. Each big city has a special shopping district dedicated to the latest and the greatest. And the stores are always packed. Historically, these high-tech zones were originally home to book sellers. Those days, of course, are long gone, but it was interesting to see how information breeds information.
These electronics stores are not shiny and modern, like an Apple Store, but rather, sort of seedy. For instance, the Akihabara District in Tokyo and the Nipponbashi Denden Town in Osaka, two of the world’s most famous electronics shopping meccas, have a vaguely pornographic look and feel, with fast-talking salesmen standing out in front of each establishment, trying to entice passersby to come in and check out the must-have merchandise. An electronics section of a Japanese city closely resembles a Geisha (red light) district.
And, perhaps, if you think about it, sex and electronics go hand-in-had (no pun intended).
