Pachinko Number One in Japan 

Pachinko is the most popular form of gambling in Japan. Japan allows lotteries, horse and boat racing, as well as many other kinds of gambling. Pachinko is more popular than all of the other kinds of gambling combined. In 2005 alone, 15,165 pachinko halls were open, with an average of 343 slot machines up and running. 

Over 30 trillion yen a year go into the slot machines, which mean big business for the county. However, something is up with the slot machines. Their popularity is slowly dropping, with a 2.5 percent drop in revenue last year. Hard gambling is not actually allowed in Japan, so you can’t pay out money to your winners, and many feel this is the reason for the decline in the slot machines. They can win prizes, but cannot win cash. 

Of course, as with anything, there are ways around the cash problem – so the players take their prizes to an exchange counter – who will give them cash for it. It is called santen hoshiki, which means three-shop system. This will help with part of their problem, but with sales declining as the aging population stops playing due to lesser incomes – the industry is going to need to find another way of bringing in business. Currently there are roughly 17 million players, down from 30 million in 1994 – and experts think that number will drop to somewhere around 11 million by the year 2020.

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