Japan´s Pachinko is beating Las Vegas amidst recession!
Recession is hitting hard in Las Vegas. However, it seems Pachinko Parlors are not feeling any pinch and on the contrary, they are growing!
In the smoky Maruhan gambling parlor near Tokyo’s Shinjuku station, Shunichiro Nagasawa feeds a 1,000-yen ($10) bill into a “pachinko” machine, helping Japan’s biggest gaming industry beat the recession and Las Vegas.
“It’s exciting — usually, after I lose many times, I win big the next time,” said Nagasawa, a 29-year-old systems engineer, pushing a button and watching hundreds of small steel balls pour down through the machine. “I do worry about the economy, but I still have a job.”
Curious Pachinko ad featuring Nicholas Cage!
As Japan’s economy shrank at an annual 12.1 percent pace in the last quarter and revenue slumped at Las Vegas casino companies like MGM Mirage and Las Vegas Sands Corp., the 23 trillion-yen pachinko industry is on a roll. Sales from the machines, which resemble upright pinball games, rebounded 0.5 percent in last quarter, reversing a six-year decline, and rose 0.9 percent in January, according to government statistics.
“There are many companies in the red — automobile makers, electronics and so on,” said Hirohito Niji, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Tokyo. “Against that, pachinko hasn’t really felt the effects.”
Evangelion Pachinko!
That’s good news for holders of “pachinko bonds” — debt backed by securitized gambling revenue — and for equipment makers including Mars Engineering Corp., the best performer in the 124-stock Topix Machinery Index in the past six months.
Maruhan, MGM
Kyoto-based Maruhan Corp., the biggest pachinko-hall operator by sales, forecast net income will rise 11 percent to 20 billion yen in the fiscal year ending today, according to a statement on its Web site. Operators aren’t publicly traded and typically don’t provide financial information.
Casino gambling revenue in Las Vegas fell the most on record last year and dropped 15 percent in January as the U.S. recession curbed spending on travel and betting. Shares of MGM Mirage and Las Vegas Sands fell more than 95 percent in the 12 months through March 27.
Introduced in the 1920s, pachinko is played by about 13 percent of Japan’s population, who fed 23 trillion yen into the machines in 2007, according to the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development.
Numbers are down from 16 percent of the population and 29.6 trillion yen in 2003, a drop that was caused by a regulatory crackdown on types of machines that encouraged heavy gambling, according to a February 2007 report by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.
13,000 ParlorsJapan’s 13,000 pachinko halls — more than one for every 10,000 residents — are located throughout the country around train stations, along highways and in entertainment areas.
Pachinko players seek to amass piles of small steel balls that can be exchanged for prizes. Because casinos are illegal in Japan, cash can’t be paid out on the premises. Prizes can usually be exchanged for money at a nearby booth.
Operators are luring customers with new high-stakes machines that yield bigger profit margins, while lowering fees for others to 1 yen per ball from 4 yen.
“Parlors are thinking more carefully about which machines customers like, which machines are the most profitable,” S&P analyst Miyuki Onchi said. “Sales have come up bit by bit.”
Lower-fee machines have widened the customer base at Maruhan, the company said in an e-mail. Founded in 1957, Maruhan said it has 242 parlors, up from 225 a year ago, and about 12,000 workers.
Pachinko Index
A custom-built index of 16 pachinko-related companies including machine makers has gained 25 percent since Oct. 27, when Japanese stocks fell to the lowest in more than two decades, Bloomberg data show. That compares with a 5.8 percent rise in the benchmark Topix index in the same period.
Reno, Nevada-based International Game Technology, the biggest U.S. slot-machine maker, lost 3.3 percent in the same period and has dropped 77 percent in the past year. Slot-machine takings dropped 12 percent in the fourth quarter at MGM Mirage, the biggest U.S. casino company.
In Japan, the need for new pachinko machines has fueled demand for financing. Some operators have issued bonds backed by securitized revenue from their parlors.
Tokyo-based Gaia Co. sold 70 billion yen of the bonds in 2005, arranged by Deutsche Bank AG. Merrill Lynch & Co. and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. have also arranged structured-finance bonds for hall operators.
Economy Worsens ‘Significantly’
While S&P maintains an A rating on Gaia’s bonds, pachinko may not escape unscathed as the recession deepens, the ratings company said in a Feb. 27 report. The economy is worsening “significantly,” the Bank of Japan said March 19, forecasting the sharpest economic contraction in 60 years.
Spending by Japanese households dropped 5.9 percent in January from a year earlier, the most in more than two years, the government said last month.
Yuichi Kobayashi, an analyst at Shinko Securities Co. in Tokyo, is maintaining “neutral plus” ratings on Mars Engineering and pachinko-machine seller Fields Corp. He has “neutral” ratings on other pachinko-related companies including Sankyo Co. and Sega Sammy Holdings Inc.
“It’s an industry that in the past, when the economy has slumped, it has improved,” Kobayashi said. “But this time we don’t know how bad the recession will be.”
In Shinjuku, Nagasawa leaves the Maruhan parlor and heads home after losing about 9,000 yen.
“It goes in waves,” he said. “Right now, my luck is down.”
Source: Bloomberg / What the heck is Pachinko?
I remember the first time I ever heard or saw a Pachinko machine was in a Doraemon´s episode and since that time, I always wanted to know more about that. I will like to play Pachinko at least once to see what´s all about, but I don´t want to play so many hours and spend so much money in there, especially in this hard times.
Official EVANGELION 2.0 trailer released…finally!
The official EVANGELION website finally released the trailer for the upcoming 2.0 version! After all the bootlegs trailers that were posted and deleted, it seems the Evangelion producers released the real thing so fans can have a bite…but wait! There is a catch…Unfortunately, it seems the content is restricted by region but you can still see the official trailer on Youtube and other websites…of course, until it is removed!
The upcoming EVANGELION 2.0 “You can (not) advance” movie is scheduled for June 27, 2009!
Japan´s closet houses!
If people don´t have an idea on how some can live in a closet, just take Japan as an example, and the economic crisis just make things worst.
Behind a row of doors in a narrow corridor of a Tokyo multitenant building, there is a set of lodgings that gives almost literal meaning to the notion of living in a cupboard.Here, tenants squeeze their worldly possessions into a space measuring just 80 centimeters by 180 cm–even smaller than one tatami mat–for a monthly rent of 27,000 yen, including utilities, or 900 yen a day.
Each of the smallest rooms in this building, in the Asakusa district of Tokyo’s Taito Ward, contains just enough space for the average adult to stretch out and sleep. The height of each compartment, located one above the other, is 90 cm.
There is no window, so when the fluorescent light is turned off, the room is in complete darkness. Day and night, the sounds of sneezing and snoring travel freely through the thin walls.
Cramped budget inns such as this one are increasing in number across Tokyo amid the deepening economic malaise.
Taking up residence in the “closet houses” is a growing underclass of people looking for the cheapest possible alternative to living on the street.
On Monday morning, a 25-year-old student from Uzbekistan appeared from one of the rooms. “I’ve overslept,” the student said as he hurried to a wash basin.
No key money or gratuity is required from residents, who share showers, toilets and a kitchen.
Over the past decade, the 40-year-old landlord here bought up seven properties sold under the order of judicial sale across Tokyo. He then remodeled them as budget inns made up of “closet houses” and slightly larger two tatami-mat compartments.
As a globe-trotting backpacker in his student days, the man dreamed of building cheap guest houses for foreigners in Japan.
Until the financial crisis struck, his customers were mostly students from China and South Korea.
Now half of them are Japanese “freeters” in their 20s through 50s, while the other half are students on working holiday programs from Europe.
“I just need a place to sleep,” said a 27-year-old student from Okinawa Prefecture who works at a software development company and dreams of starting his own business. “It would be a waste to pay (an expensive) rent.”
In the Kinshicho district in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward, a 39-year-old real estate businessman runs similar lodgings for struggling tenants.
Most of the people living in his two tatami-mat rooms are in their 30s through 60s, and many are scratching out a living on welfare benefits. At least one of his inns caters exclusively to women.
The man frequently receives inquiries from people living in the countryside who seek jobs in Tokyo.
“Tokyo’s economy is in bad shape,” he says, “but life in the country seems worse.”
So cheap is the latest wave of lodgings that older budget inns have lost some of their appeal.
The Sanya district in Tokyo’s Taito Ward is dotted with worn signs that read “2,200 yen per night,” “air conditioned” and “color TV in each room.”
At the cheapest inn, a shared room costs 900 yen per person per night, according to an official at the district’s association of inn operators. About 80 percent of customers are on welfare.
A private room costs more than 2,500 yen per night, which works out to more than 70,000 yen for a month-long stay.
In recent years, many lodgings in the district have been refurbished to attract foreign travelers and students instead of day laborers.
As spring holidays have begun, there is a constant flow of families visiting from out of town, student groups and university students in suits seeking work, the official said.
Tetsuo Kiyama, who operates the Hoteiya budget inn, said lodgings in the Sanya district had become, relatively speaking, expensive for the growing ranks of Internet cafe “refugees.”
Kiyama, 58, said Internet cafes and comic cafes in urban centers, where people with no fixed residence and often no regular jobs stay overnight, had become modern-day flophouses.
Source: Asahi
I really don´t like to post news like this one, but it is a call of attention that people should know how is reality in Japan and everywhere else during this economic crisis.
Karate Kid no more…It is Kung Fu Kid!?
March 30, 2009 by Toonleap
Filed under News, Otaku Corner
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It seems producers for the remake of “The Karate Kid” listened to the voice of reason and decided to change the name of the movie.
Last year it was announced that Columbia Pictures was remaking the 1984 classic Karate Kid with Jaden Smith set to star. In January, we announced that Jackie Chan had been cast as the lovable Mr. Miyagi, stepping in for Pat Morita. As far as I know, not a single person was excited by any of this news, but of course Sony is pushing forward with the production in hopes of convincing audiences later with marketing. Well, a good friends of ours dropped by with a tip recently letting us know that in a recent interview with Jackie Chan, he let slip that this remake is actually going to be called Kung Fu Kid, not Karate Kid.
“They don’t want to call it Karate Kid any more,” Chan said. “They want to call it The Kung Fu Kid.” He quickly changed topics and unfortunately didn’t add any more about as to why this change was being made. Our guess is that since this remake is a Chinese co-production and being shot in Beijing, it’s much more relevant today to use kung fu as opposed to karate (which isn’t as popular as it was back in the 80’s) and also more appropriate considering karate actually has its historical roots in kung fu. As in, story updates and Chinese influence caused them to change the title to be more culturally relevant and accurate.
Source: First Showing
If you are a regular visitor of this humble site, you know that We saw this coming all the way after all the changes in the setting and choosing Jackie Chan as the Sensei! It was just common sense!
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