Japanese culture is truly fascinating. Old and traditional lives with new and modern side by side. It’s not unusual to see a woman wearing a kimono and traditional Japanese sandals in a mall where others are wearing jeans and t-shirts. Politeness and respect goes beyond what anyone from the US would reasonably expect. You’ll never get honked at no matter how slow you drive, people will stop whatever they are doing to help you, and everyone leaves their car doors completely unlocked (with the keys inside) because crime rate is essentially zero. But one of the most interesting facets of Japanese culture is gambling. Gambling is.. illegal in Japan, yes, but it’s everywhere in loopholed ways.

Take this vending machine for example. See the 0000-9999 on the bottom? When you buy an item from this vending machine, you’ll see four numbers pop up, one by one. If all four numbers are the same (e.g. 7777), then you get a second drink for free! Gambling on a vending machine. But it doesn’t stop there. Not even close, this is just a small taste of gambling here.

This claw machine has a Spider Man figurine on a shelf close to a hole where it would fall and become your prize. There is a claw above it. You have one chance to move the claw horizontally, one chance to move it vertically, then you release the claw and hope it moves the toy to the hole. Every chance is ¥100 ($0.70) but boy oh boy do the yen disappear quickly!

The holy grail of gambling in Japan, however, is absolutely the Gacha machines. For ¥200-400 ($1.50-$3) you can get a type of toy from a machine. You know it’ll be one of the 4 or 5 options on the front of the machine but you don’t know which one. You can use these to make collections of these little toys.

Thse are the Gacha machines. As you can see, they all have completely different toys in them!

Some are cute characters from video games, anime, or well known brands like Hello Kitty.

Some are sorta practical like this cute cat pencil holder.

Some are just plain weird or disturbing like this tentacle ear plug thing. Yeah… no thanks.

Leanne is totally addicted already. These Gacha machines are everywhere! In the doorway of restaurants, in businesses, by benches in shopping malls, and there are even whole stores just dedicated to Gacha machines that get frequently rotated out to new collections.

So when you come to visit us, have a coin purse at the ready!