Bar and Pachinko

Here is some random bar I stopped at. I was given peas and a spoon along with my beer, and I am pretty sure that they over-charged me.

This is a pachinko parlor. It is a huge rip-off.

You put in about 8 dollars into the machine and then you are given so many metal balls. You then control how quickly these metal balls are fed into the machine.

After being fed into the the machine, the balls bounce around on pins and are usually lost. If, however, you are lucky and the balls bounce into a very small slot in the center, the machine then acts like a slot machine, and if you win, you are given more balls.

(I should not have used the flash right here)

I couldn't stop playing soon enough. The circular knob on the lower right-hand side controlled the flow, and a series of pink buttons controls the slot-machine game and the cash-out function. No one spoke English so this I learned through the pantomimes of the frustrated pachinko attendants as I kept repeating "I do not understand." I cashed out as soon as possible. That process was pretty strange, first the balls were counted and I was given a receipt. Then, I took that receipt to the back where an old man gave me two pieces of candy and a couple small plastic slides with yen inside. I was then led outside to an adjacent building where a chubby woman's hand behind a small window gave me 400 yen for those slides. (I gather that this is all an elaborate scheme to circumvent the laws against gambling in Japan.) All in all, I ended up losing 600 of the 1000 yen I paid into the machine. So, basically I paid about 5 bucks for two small pieces of candy and a lesson in avoiding pachinko parlors.

On the street

To cover up the gutter, the Japanese put some pictures of animals along the sidewalk.

My shoe made it into this shot.
At the top of this man-hole cover it says "Hirakata city water." It looks like they put a lot of work into the design.

Women and children cross at this part of the street.

Men with hats cross here.

Campus, tatami mats, vending machines

Click Here to see my panoramic view of campus

This is the main administration building.
(That's my bookbag on the bench.)
This is the library and media center.

Here is a shot of the common area. My room is past the TV in the back left corner.
Here is the kitchen area. During orientation, all the pots, pans and utensils were locked up, and we were only allowed to boil water, and use the microwave and refrigerator. I ate a lot of sushi and cup-o-noodles.

Here is an environmentally friendly toilet in the seminar house that allows you to wash your hands with the water filling the tank.


This is where I sleep. Those are futons on top of tatami mats, traditional Japanese floor coverings.

This is a shot of how close our quarters are. That's my futon on the left...I figured out that this is a condom machine. Apparently you can choose condoms by blood type.

There are many vending machines with drinks. When I saw this one, I thought that the Japanese had invented some sort of Kit-Kat drink. After I paid 100 yen for it, I found out that it was just a glass jar with 6 Kit-Kats inside.