I used to think the sound of falling steel balls was harmless—almost comforting, like rain on a tin roof. Now I hear it even when I close my eyes. It rings in the spaces between my thoughts, in the quiet moments of the train ride home, in the pauses of conversation with my wife. Pachinko has woven itself into the rhythm of my life, a rhythm I once believed I controlled.
I am forty-six years old, old enough to know better. My father worked in a shipyard in Yokohama, and he used to laugh at the men who disappeared into parlors after their shifts, muttering that they were “chasing metal instead of meaning.” I remember that phrase. Chasing metal. I didn’t realize I’d become one of them.
At first it wasn’t even about money. It was the sensation—the lights, the constant trembling of the machine, the promise that just one more ball might topple the careful balance of chance and shower me with a victory I could hold in my hands. At work, my days blurred into spreadsheets and polite greetings. At home, I tried to be the steady father, the dependable husband. But inside the pachinko parlor, I felt something sharp and alive, like a secret version of myself lit by neon.
I started telling small lies. “I’m working late.” “The train was delayed.” “A colleague needed help.” Lies that slid easily into place, so small I barely felt the weight of them. Until they added up. Until they were heavier than any tray of steel balls I carried to the counter.
My wife, Keiko, asked me once why my jacket smelled like cigarettes when I don’t smoke. I told her someone bumped into me on the platform. She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes steady, as if searching for the truth directly on my face. I turned away before she could find it.
There is a particular shame in losing money not through necessity, but through hope. I tell myself I can stop anytime—another lie, but one I cling to because it feels warm. Some nights, I walk past the parlor without going in. I feel proud for a moment, like a man reclaiming his life. But then the sound reaches me, that metallic rainfall pouring out every time the glass doors open for someone else. I tell myself, Just ten minutes. And ten minutes becomes an hour. An hour becomes a paycheck.
I don’t know when I crossed the line between enjoyment and dependency. Maybe it was the night I won big—80,000 yen in tokens, a glittering heap that made the clerk raise his eyebrows. That win sank a hook into me far deeper than any loss. It whispered: See? You belong here. It made me believe the parlor was a place I could change my fate, if only I played long enough, waited long enough, believed long enough.
But fate doesn’t live inside those machines. Only noise and probability.
Last week, my son asked if we could go to the aquarium together. I told him I was too tired. In truth, I was thinking about a new machine the parlor had installed, bright red with a hero from some anime I’d never heard of. My son’s shoulders fell a little, but he smiled anyway. Ten minutes later, the guilt arrived. Heavy. Familiar. I walked into the bathroom and splashed water on my face, pretending I could wash it away.
I don’t know what I want more—to win enough to quit, or to quit enough to win back the life I’ve been letting slip through my fingers.
Sometimes, in the early morning before anyone wakes, I sit by the window and watch the neighborhood slowly brighten. No lights, no music, no steel balls cascading like silver rain. Just the stillness of a day that hasn’t asked anything of me yet. In that quiet, I feel a version of myself I could return to, if I chose.
I’m not sure I’m strong enough yet. But I’m trying to hear the silence more clearly than the machines.
I’m trying to remember how to live without the rain.