The strange lure of the pachinko parlour

It takes me all of about two minutes to lose ¥1,000 (about $10) at the pachinko parlour in downtown Tokyo, one of 371 owned by Dynam Japan Holdings, Japan's second-largest operator. I am so mesmerized by the surreal flashing lights, loud music, cartoon figures on the screen and the small silver steel balls bouncing rapidly off pins and bumpers on my gaudy electronic machine that I hardly notice how quickly my small stash of balls disappears.

As with most foreigners, the subtleties and addictive properties of a game that has been described as a cross between pinball, slot machines and vertical roulette escape me. I stop well before reaching the ¥10,000-limit recommended by Motoyuki Nakajima, the affable managing director of the Pachinko Chain Store Association, the industry's lobby.

The handful of other players nearby, mostly middle-aged and all male, sit expressionless for hours at their machines, pumping in thousands of yen worth of balls, at ¥4 apiece, in the hopes of adding to their total by getting the ball to drop into a small centre hole.

There are plenty of vacant seats in the arcade, partly because it's mid-afternoon and the normal rush of commuters have yet to stop by on their way to the train station around the corner. But there is also a distinct lack of younger players, for whom pachinko was once something of a right of passage.

One who still plays is Masato Takahashi, 20, a third-year university student, who said it helps reduces stress. But for most of his friends, pachinko simply isn't holding its own with the online games available on smartphones everywhere.

Pachinko, which began life as a mechanical game for children, became hugely popular in the postwar years. And for decades it has been the only form of machine gambling allowed under Japan's strict anti-gambling law, thanks to a loophole in the way winnings are paid out: No prize money is ever handed out inside the parlour, which would be illegal. As a result, pachinko is classed like video arcades as an entertainment business.

At the peak in the mid-1990s, Japan had about 20,000 pachinko shops that attracted about one of every six Japanese, many of them young and male. Today, there are fewer than 12,000 and only about one in 12 people acknowledges playing at least once a year.

But the industry is working hard to modernize its halls, introducing non-smoking sections, bringing in the latest chain-store management techniques, cleaning up its old image as a haunt for yakuza gangsters and trying to attract more female players.

The big operators hope the casino plan will include a bone or two for them – slot machines and the ability to provide direct cash payouts to winners, ending the decades-long farcical system under which they operate.

But they shouldn't hold their breath, warns Tsukasa Akimoto, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who heads the parliamentary group steering the new legislation. "We can't have 12,000 gambling spots in Japan," says Mr. Akimoto, 42, who played pachinko in his 20s. "It's not socially acceptable."

Losing my entire modest investment means I don't get participate in the strange ritual involved in paying off winners.

When players are done, a uniformed staffer dumps the tray of balls into a machine that noisily tallies them and issues a receipt that is then handed over at an exchange counter for small prizes or tokens. The player exits the hall and heads to a tiny exchange always located nearby and hands over the prizes for cash. No one at the pachinko parlour is allowed to direct them to the exchange. And no one related to the operator is permitted to work there.