Word: pachinko
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Postwar Tokyo has had a passion for fads. For many years, it was pachinko, or playing the pinball machines. Then came the chubby plastic dakkochan dolls (TIME, Aug. 29, 1960) that clung to girls' arms and shoulders. The latest craze is angling parlors, where patrons can drop a line into a pool and, be mused by background music, fish for carp. The fad caught on last year when the angling parlors mushroomed from a few score to a present-day 539 in the heart of the city. One parlor was installed in a former bar with the pool behind...
...revealing shiny new buildings, glistening overhead superhighways and a network of fine, wide roads that is already speeding up traffic considerably. Four superexpressways slash like sword scars through 62 miles of the once impenetrable capital, while 25 miles of new subway bore beneath the random, rickety scab of slums, pachinko parlors and noodle shops that is home to most of the city's population...
Pachinlco & Prices. But fleeing Tokyo by train is the last thing Olympic visitors will want to do. The city itself offers more action and interaction than any other major conurbation outside New York. There are 1,052 pachinko parlors constantly pocking the air with the jangle of small metal pinballs, 527 movie houses, 30 bowling alleys, a triple-decker golf driving range near the Tokyo Tower, four full-scale symphony orchestras, three opera companies, three baseball parks (drawing as many as 45,000 spectators a night) and of course there is the Kabuki Theater. There is also Tokyo...
Most surprising is TIME'S statement about an Okinawan law forbidding gambling. Besides the dozens of pachinko (Japanese pinball) parlors centered around Naha's International Street, nearly all the large cabarets have one-armed bandits...
...often sell their blood to pay tuition and may commit suicide if they fail to get a job on graduation. The cities blaze with neon lights, teen-age girls in pony tails squeal their delight in "rockabilly" singers, and the streets resound to jukebox music and the clatter of pachinko (pinball) machines. But in most of Japan, marriages are still arranged by traditional matchmakers, business deals are still settled in geisha houses, and wives still greet their husbands on hands and knees. Laments a young sculptor: "It is impossible for us not to lead a double life, half Japanese, half...