What? Huh? Say again! What? Whose ears are bleeding?

Just a block away from our hotel is a building with giant neon lights spelling out PACHINKO, the intriguing Japanese game that's like pinball, but with significantly less control over the outcome. Nicole and I figured we would try it out. We walked in to the most deafening noise you can imagine. If you think casinos are loud, this was 10x that. It took us a little while to figure out how to get started. We got to the part where we put money in the machine, but as all the buttons were in Japanese, we were a bit stumped after that. A businessman must have noticed our struggle and hit a button on his way by.

Dozens of tiny ball bearings came popping out. From doing a brief amount of research, I knew the object was to twist one of the knobs a certain amount to control how much the balls get launched into the machine. Beyond that, one just waits to see if the ball lands in the target area or just drops down elsewhere. And really, that's about all there is to it. At one point, the machine made more noise and some more balls came out to extend our play a little bit, but it was a fairly fruitless endeavor that didn't yield positive results. We left empty-handed without even a Hello Kitty pencil eraser. You see, you can't win money from Pachinko, just tokens to be redeemed for prizes. The video doesn't fully convey the noise, but I shall attempt anyway . . .