Bernard Delattre, edited by Laura Laplaud / Photo credit: JINHEE LEE / NURPHOTO / NURPHOTO VIA AFP
After having made you discover the key professions of the summer season, Europe 1 immerses you this week in an auditory series. Close your eyes and open your ears to discover the sounds of cities around the world. For this fifth episode, we take you to Tokyo to discover pachinko, a game of chance practiced everywhere in Japan.
“If I had the means, I would spend my days at pachinko!”
Pachinko is a device that can be described halfway between a pinball machine and a slot machine. Vertical, colorful, thundering pinball machines with a sound that can be described, for some, as the most painful in the world. However, 10 million Japanese, fans of these pinball machines, go every day to the 9,000 pachinko halls in Japan. And many love this noise, like these two Tokyoites. “This soundscape is fabulous. Me, I’m really addicted. If I had the means, I would spend my days at pachinko!” throw one of them. “All this noise makes the game even more exciting. Me in any case, it electrifies me”, continues the second.
“These operators should care more about the neighborhood”
In the neighborhood, not all the inhabitants are of the same opinion. “Every time customers come in or out, it’s hell for the residents, a real nuisance!”, “These operators should be more concerned about the neighborhood and the police should be much stricter”, they say.
No regulations limit noise emissions from slot machines. Especially since we must not interfere, for a question of decibels, a sector which is flourishing and which generates an annual turnover of 150 billion euros.