¡°Welcome!¡± two young women in shorts and Hawaiian shirts chime over the clatter of pinballs and J-pop music at the Million pachinko parlor in the Tokyo residential area of Suginami.
¡°Your favorite machines are waiting for you, nice and clean,¡± beckon orange, green and yellow signs near the door. ¡°We lead you to the next level of amusement.¡±
For decades, this is how millions of Japanese office workers, housewives and retirees have kicked off long, smoky nights out. They come to play pachinko, a pinball-slot-machine hybrid that has skirted a nationwide gambling ban to become an industry that takes in bets of ?19 trillion ($187 billion), bigger than the entire economy of New Zealand.
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