telica comments

I have noticed that drivers in Japan do not treat predestrian crossings or red / orange lights the same as in New Zealand. I see people running reds daily, sometimes almost hitting a predestrian on a green cross sign. Gotta have your wits about you here for sure man.

Happens too often for my liking and it is mostly annoying - especially when their English is bad - then it becomes akward.

fedex delivers.

If you walk into any game center you will see people of all ages (as young as junior high school students) gambling. The game centers have slot machines, poker , Mah Jong, roulette and elaborate horse racing gambling systems.

Yes, but this isn't real gambling, they just win medals / coins which they can use to play other games until they lose them all. They cannot exchange these medals for cash so I think this game center stuff is a quite a bit different from real pachinko parlours.

this is a terrible and unnecessary escalation of events. I mean 10,000 worth of special bottles OH NO. That's nothing compared to a husband with a pachinko addiction. At least the bottles would have had resale value. Checking your husband's prized possessions out like that, anyone would be pissed off.

just out of interest, how much is the NHK fee?

Who owns haneda airport and why are LCCs being locked out? I guess ANA and JAL have some sort of monopolistic deal with Haneda? Haneda must be super profitable I guess.

yeah but according to JR's official site http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pass/seishun18.html it is only available 1 time per year now :( so maybe japan-guide haven't updated their page... I guess this has only just happened in the last year.

Sounds good, I knew about seushun 18 but that seems to only be available once a year now instead of 3 times. What is the name of this type of ticket?

i guess its news because there is a produce thief on the loose in ibaraki, melons, rice, what next? Hate having my stuff stolen and feel for the farmers. Hope they catch them and they are made to pay back triple to everyone they stole from.

probably pay not to play pachinko there for a few days - the parlour will probably be trying to make back what they lost, shouldn't take too long!

so the question really is what will happen to them now? deported or jail in japan or what?

Saitama seems to pop up a lot in crime related news, is there something about Saitama other than a pretty big population that could explain this?

is community approval from local government still required for reactor restarts or does this agency have the power to restart regardless of community opinion?

Great game, great win, great women

Yeah it got more expensive and they changed too much, should have got the basics right before getting fancy, but still, at least it's wendys. better than mcd's.

I'd rather see them in normal clothes such as mini-skirts and knee socks. Yukata hide all the best bits!

yeah but changing it up every now and again is good too!

Is it just me or is there a lot of crime in Saitama? It seems to be mentioned very often when I read the crime articles here.

3rd from right and one in the red get my vote

Stantheman, was that pun intended? Anyway, yeah pretty freaky.

Nothing against the photo - but would like to see some photos of places / things outside of Tokyo.

girls, arcades especially UFO catchers, soba, convenience of trains, vending machines, cute smiles, service culture, safety at night, pachinko

language dominance battles do happen in my experience, because as a foreigner you naturally attract Japanese who want to practice their english on you. Sometimes you end up having half english / half japanese conversations because neither party wants to speak their own language! :)

looks more like a statue than a real elephant, fitting i guess

It sorta was too good to be true and i can understand why budget approval has not been given. I don't think it would go down well in any country.

Burger King Japan's whoppers are horrible. I couldn't believe how different the meat tasted to what I was used to in New Zealand or even Hungry Jacks in Aus. To be fair Maccas was the same, the meat was horrible. Can someone confirm whether the patties are all beef? Cause I know some chains use a beef / pork mix which would explain the strange taste. The best burger I had was at Wendy's in Tokyo, the patties were imported from Aus and they tasted the same as back home.

madinagaijinboy, the figure was actually 380 BILLION not million. Anyway, I have played a fair bit of pachinko while in Japan and am currently researching pachinko in comparison with pokies (a type of Electronic Gaming Machine played in New Zealand). Initially the noise and smoke put you off but I think to truely understand why people enjoy it you have to find a machine you like, play and win on it (for me this is the Evangelion machine). It brings a certain level of satisfaction even if you know that overall you lose. I generally stick to 1 yen (ichipachi) pachinko these days as you can have the same fun for 1/4 of the cost. It you played standard 4 yen pachinko you could easily go through 1-2man in an hour. Another important thing to realise is that if you cash out at a TUC shop you're only getting about 62% of the value of your winnings. If you can find a parlour with decent prizes you'd be better off cashing for prizes as you then retain 100% of your winnings. All that aside, I think, as many people have pointed out there are many many life destroying negatives and as pachinko is officially classed as a "leisure" activity rather than a gamble there is insufficient regulation, problem gambling awareness and help. This combined with a deep sense of shame that Japanese can feel results in an extremely sad situation for some people.

Nice curves on the left there, nice bikini too, i like the ribbon thing. Not too shabby all round.

That is not a pachinko machine, that is a slot machine. Pachinko works with balls, that has the 3 red buttons that you use to stop the reels spinning. Not pachinko.

That one withe cat ears would be my pick, cute, tall and nice legs.