Game over

This is the land of video games, but you might be surprised at the kinds of games that fill the 8-story entertainment buildings.

Pachinko is the Japanese pinball/slot machine and can be a hobby, a passion, an obsession or even a job: it seems that it is not entirely a matter of luck and there are people that actually make a living with it. The foreigner wanting to learn how to play is promptly rejected out of the doors by the unbearable noise of thousands of steel balls bouncing around.

There are floors and floors of Ufo Catcher games: 100¥ and you can try to grab very kawai things.

Let's turn to more traditional video games and let's see what's trendy here and will be probably imported in the future in our countries.
They found a way to mix the collectible cards trading games a la Magic with strategy videogames. So here people buy these cards and then play with them against the machine.

There also multi-player games. In this one, people sit quietly watching a horse race. On their own screen they can place bets and pat the favourite horse.

The trendiest are music-simulation game. There's usually a set of three: the keyboards, the guitar and the drums which can be played alone or by a group of three persons. A simplified music score scrolls in front of you and you have to play the keys/drums/strings with the right tempo. The professional gamers have a "fidelity" card on which their performance is recorded.

The strange thing is that there are not beginners of any game and I always see expert players. There's a girl that I see every time I go there - she is always playing the same guitar game, with the same song. It seems to me that the Japanese put an enormous amount of effort in every activity, and games are no exception.

In my effort to blend in the country, I thought I had to become proficient in at least one of these games. I tried the keyboards, but several years of piano lessons proved worthless. I tried the drums, but rhythm isn't my thing. Finally I found my own quest - actually, it's more of an addiction now - with Namco Taiko Drum Master, which is a dumbed-down version of the drums game. A taiko is a traditional Japanese drum. Here's the big one at Meiji Shingu:

The game is easy: you see red and blue circles on the screen. Red circle: bang in the middle, blue circle: bang on the side.

It's addictive; unfortunately I couldn't find the PAL version of the PlayStation game which comes with a sugoi drum controller.

Last week I reached the apex of my taiko drummer career, when I finally got a high score on the machine. Just after I wrote my name in hiragana (a-n-do-re-a), a ninninsei - a black-uniform dressed 12 years old kid - who was watching me, started a game, chose the same songs as I did, but in the next difficulty level and got a perfect score. So much for my moment of glory.