And yet people still play! I think - and this is my little cynicism - that the world is an unfair place and yet we continue to play, and we continue to show up.
When I interviewed all these pachinko parlour owners about how they messed around with the pins every single day to affect the payout, it occurred to me that pachinko is a rigged game. “And yet the middle class view this adult gambling game with enormous suspicion and a kind of contempt. “You really can’t walk down the street or enter a single train station or go anywhere in Japan without seeing a pachinko parlour,” she explains. The garish, high-tech machines are ubiquitous throughout the country as an industry it dwarfs the Japanese auto sector. Anyone familiar with Japan will know that Pachinko - the title of a new novel by Korean American author Min Jin Lee - is a type of adult gambling game, a unique cross between video lottery terminals and pinball.
