Category: Society & Culture

“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere.”
– Ronald Reagan
Without a doubt, that’s the most useful leadership advice anyone has ever given me. My own tribute is simple:
I cried for you with my classmates and my teacher the day you got shot. The principal came by the classroom to make sure everyone understood what had happened. He said, “a very bad man tried to kill our president.” I’m not sure we all understood the full meaning of this statement. What I do know is that you were a hero to us, and none of us wanted to see you go.
Rest in peace.

Hey, I know it’s a total fucking joke now, but I grew up with rap. LL Cool J’s Radio was the first cassette tape I remember buying. The Adventures of Slick Rick was the first CD I ever bought. So this headline makes me yearn for the days of Peter Piper and Paid in Full:
Ice-T And David Hasselhoff Team Up For Rap Album
Whatever happened to the hard line of, say, Six in the Morning?
Rhyme Pays, indeed.

The Japanese title for “The Karate Kid” is “Best Kid“, which is kind of funny if you think about why they felt compelled to replace a perfectly understandable title (to the average Jiro or Hanako, anyway) for one that makes a hell of a lot less sense and sounds, well, kinda wack (You the bestest, Daniel-san! Done waxing the floor?). The soundtrack for this movie is so synthesizically enhanced it makes me embarrassed to have grown up in the same era. Otherwise, I find it a pleasure to watch once every few years or so.
Imagine my surprise when I found the Cobra-kai in real life. They have high-ranking fighters in the Japanese PANCRASE “hyper-wrestling” league, and they live up to their movie reputation. Basically, they all wear black short-sleeve gi and act like assholes during the tournaments, especially after they win.
What is our motto, ladies?
Strike First! Strike Hard! No Mercy, Sir!

Oh great. As soon as I give props to a band, they turn around and insert shiv directly in my spinal column. The MTV page I linked to in my previous post has a link on the right side:
Audioslave’s Tom Morello To Protest Taco Bell
Hey Tom (or is that Mr. Nightwatchman?), stop quoting Cesar Chavez and shut the fuck up! The fucking chihuahua loves Cesar Chavez, but if you bring down the Evil Empire and leave us with nothing but Green Burrito/Carls Jr. franchises and Delfucking Tacos, I’ll be really pissed.

A mix between Back in Black and The Joshua Tree would be interesting but the only thing I really care about is that it doesn’t SUCK. This is one of the only recent bands worth listening to. Period.
I may have a line on some studio recordings for the second album. I will update on this later. Just remember, I had the full Battle of Los Angeles CD in stere-ereo a full month before it went on sale (of course, so did half of the other Hotline haxxors). But that was a long time ago. Let’s just say that an old friend happened by the other day.
Here is a good Audioslave bio, including a bit that my brother and I disputed often regarding the rumors of a break up before their first album.
Note: If you are a hit parader, you have no right to comment on this post.

I spoke with a friend about this the other night and we did some rough (read: beer-inspired) calculations to estimate how much money every Japanese taxpayer paid for the release of the Japanese hostages in Iraq this month: about 2,000 yen. I do not vouch for the accuracy of this figure, but I want to make it clear that I do not agree with the decision to pay for their release, no matter what the cost. They chose to go where their country told them not to, and tear-jerking death threat footage aside, the burden of consequence should not fall on our shoulders. 2000 yen per taxpayer for the whole country is way too much to pay for 5 people’s ransom, for that matter, so is a single yen. I bet you I’m not the only one who feels this way, either.
The anti-government views of the hostages are obvious, and there are rumours about their possible collusion with enemy forces – that the whole incident including abduction, videotaping, etc., was a set up. Obviously, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, either. The situation is being looked into, and hopefully the truth will eventually come out. I won’t pass early judgement, but if it turns out that those taken hostage were, indeed, working with the enemy, I think they should be punished, harshly.
That a portion of my tax money is now most likely being used to prolong the insurgency in Iraq is almost more than I can bear. I would like to think it affects the average Jiro the same way, if he would only stop to think about it.

After lengthy observation, I have come to a conclusion: In Japan, the Toyota Prius is a car marketed for a single demographic, namely, painfully slow drivers. I have never seen such a bunch of I-can’t-drive-55 brake tapping, hesitating, yellow light anticipating, slow-ass idiots. If this is the price us normal folk must pay to “save the environment,” I say we start a “Spit at the Prius” campaign in retribution.
Seriously, the way these people drive really makes me wonder if there actually is a gasoline engine in there among the fields of capacitors and NiMH batteries. A Prius owner I recently spoke with affirmed his penchant for driving at Nader-like levels and explained that the more he idles and breaks, the more the batteries are recharged. Now this is a level of idiocy I hadn’t previously regarded as being possible, but there it is. This guy had been blindfolded and brainwashed by the “eco-driving” crowd and somehow thinks he is doing the world a big fucking favor by stepping on the brakes and imitating an electric wheelchair.
Let me tell you pal, I’d be a lot happier if you rode a goddamn mamachari (granny bicycle) and got the hell off the road. You might not be saving mother earth, but you might not get a tree planted in your ass, either.

A recent post about pachinko over at the USS Clueless rubbed me the wrong way. The line that bothered me was:

There’s no skill involved and no real way for the player to increase their chance of winning.

This is just false and I was disappointed to see this on Steven Den Beste’s blog, as he is one of my favorite daily reads. He usually researches his subjects well and writes about them in great detail. Regarding this one specific point, however, he is wrong. There is skill involved and there are ways to increase the odds at winning at pachinko, and good pachinko players use them all. I will not cover cheating or illegal methods in detail here, but rest assured they do exist and people get caught all the time. Actually I know quite a few stories regarding the dark side of pachinko and may cover them in a future post.
My credentials regarding this subject:
I used to play a lot. I have always been lucky at pachinko, which is of course a big reason why I like it. How lucky? Back when I was in university, I could make money off it fairly regularly and probably came out slightly ahead overall (although not enough to forego working part-time). My biggest take for one day was 149,000 yen, over a thousand dollars at the time (winnings aren’t recorded or taxed). My luckiest feat was the time when I walked into a pachinko parlor and picked up two balls that had spilled onto the floor, put them in the machine, sunk the second ball in the center hole, and won 6,000 yen when the machine hit. I fondly remember walking out without gambling any of that money and instead buying dinner for my girlfriend, so you can see that pachinko shares common ground with all other forms of gambling: Knowing when to walk away is key.
Choosing when to play is a major factor for winning at pachinko. It is generally thought that weekends are the worst time to play because the popular parlors are guaranteed high turnout by people who play for fun. The ideal time to go to pachinko is the first few days after the opening of a new parlor. People will wait outside for hours (opening time is almost always 10AM and closing time varies but is usually 11PM) on opening day because the parlor will often set the machines to easier settings to attract a crowd and make a favorable impression with their prospective (return) customers. The second best time to go is when a parlor replaces their old machines with newer types, which usually happens every few months and the frequency of which is a good indicator of how much money the store brings in. At these times as well, the machines are often changed to easier settings for a few days.
The machine has both electronic and mechanical systems that are used to change the payout profile and the chances of winning. The electronics control the “heart” of the game that pays a set jackpot (approximately 4500 – 6000 yen) if matching numbers/characters/symbols line up on the center display, much like a Las Vegas slot machine. The electronics can be set to raise or lower the odds of winning, and there are usually presets numbered 1 to 10, with 1 representing the highest odds of winning. I know this because I have taken several apart for fun (used machines can be bought legally and I’ve found several in the trash).
Unlike a slot machine, the start of the game is not controlled directly by just inserting money and pulling down the arm. You buy the pachinko balls at a set rate (different between regions; Osaka and most of western Japan is set at 4 yen per ball) and use the knob on the lower right side of the machine to control the stream of balls into the area of play. For the vast majority of machines, the object is to get balls to fall into a hole under the center display to trigger the start of the game (this is where action starts on the display). Therefore, the more balls you can get to fall into the “trigger” hole, the better chance you have at winning, and that, in a nutshell, is the primary goal of pachinko – finding the One True Way to the center and into the hole.
This is where the mechanical side of the equation comes in. Between the top of the play area (from which the balls fall down) and the trigger hole there are rows of bronze pins arranged in patterns that determine the flow of the balls when they drop down. The positioning and shape of pins is extremely important to the parlor. They bend them to precisely control how easy it is to get the pachinko balls into the trigger hole. It is a fine art, and more secure than the electronic settings, which can be tampered with by concealed radio transmitters, swapped control chips, or even modified cellphones. There are of course mechanical hacks as well, but they are more visible and almost all parlors have security cameras to catch the low-tech crooks.
As a player, one of the most dramatic ways of increasing your odds is by being able to “read the pins” (Japanese: kugi wo yomu), and choose machines that can be triggered with a minimum expenditure of balls. I often hear tips regarding this subject passed back and forth between pachipro, professionals who are good enough at pachinko to make a living off it. (An example of a typical tip is about looking at the shape of a specific pin on a specific type of machine.) But reading the pins can be done by any level of player who wants to win and is willing to learn through a bit of trial and error (this is also a hook for a future post). By reading the pins, you can also quickly figure out where to aim the flow of balls on the particular machine you have chosen. The faster you can find the One True Way, the more efficiently you can use your supply of balls to trigger the start of the game, and the greater chances you have of winning.

As I have explained in the past, I am a terrible gadget junkie. But I’m frugal, in some ways. The main reason I can hardly ever bear to pay top dollar for my toys is that I feel it wasteful since any money I save can be invested… In other toys, of course. I am very proud of being able to find the BEST deals for my expensive buys, be it online or in the bargain carts of back streets in Nipponbashi. I am a merciless bargainer and can invariably get a discount even at stores that “do not practice” bargaining… There are 2 keys here.
The first is specific to Kansai, the western region of Japan where Cosmic Buddha was born. Cosmic Buddha as in my website/band/social circle, not me. And when I say Kansai, I mean Osaka. Osaka merchants are known for being good at business. Meaning, they will greet you with a friendly smile and then stab you in the back… Nah, just kidding – kind of. Osaka merchants are nice and friendly most of the time, but in this giant fucking depression we are muddling through, you best believe they will take every dollar they can get.
You know that practice you’ve read about a thousand times in articles about small shops in Japan, about how they will often give the first customer of the day discounts for good luck? From my observations, that shit doesn’t happen in Osaka very often, and if it does, it’s because someone is getting suckered. Come on noobs, small shops are small for a reason… Do you really think they can afford to take a loss on a big sale as an appeasement to the god of small merchants (Answer: No, and the main appeasements to gods of business are made at Ebisu Jinja at the new year). I talked to one fool who was going to line up for the new DocoMo phones earlier this year and he actually told me that he would be the first in line in order to get a big discount… His brilliant idea was to buy 10 phones at this supposed discount and resell them for a profit. Needless to say, he lined up at 4 in the morning for naught… As if the stores would discount phones they could sell at double profit for the first month (when they had any stock at all)!
But I digress. The first tip for bargaining in Kansai (er…Osaka) is: Incite the Osakan business pride! When they refuse to give you a discount the first time, say “are you from Tokyo or something?”, or “you speak like a fucking news anchor!” in the most gutteral Kansai dialect you can muster (BTW, if you learned Japanese in a classroom, this tip does not apply to you). Then follow up with indignance and further insult, if necessary, as you get ready to leave the store. Something along the lines of “well fuck if you’re gonna ask this much for it, I might as well buy it at a big chain store that won’t go out of business“, or my favorite, “at least I won’t have to make that trip to Tower to get a whiff of Tokyo Ghetto Pussy. ” More often than not, this will result in:
A. A heavy discount for the item in question
– or –
B. One of those hooked poles they use to lower the steel shutters over the shop at closing time, planted firmly in your ass
My second tip is for use anywhere, but you must be shameless and in a true bargaining mood to pull it off. Amateurs need not apply, but this tip works 80% of the time in my experience. I only play this card when I really want something and I feel the shop will accept the offer. Now with all these obvious disclaimers out of the way, let me unveil the second tip for bargaining in Osaka: Show the money.
The best example of this tactic in use I can give is when I bought my Fujitsu laptop three years ago (in Nipponbashi of course). This was the cleanest bargaining I have ever pulled, and one of the best deals I ever made. The shop in question was Naniwa Denki, which has a reputation for having good deals as a result of broad connections (when a computer retailer goes out of business they are often the first in line to buy the merch). This laptop retailed for 255,000 yen. It was new, but the outer box had a crease in it (packaging makes the sales in Japan). They were offering it for 195,000, cash-only w/shop warranty for one year. At the time, this in itself was the best deal I could find in the WHOLE WORLD for a laptop of this caliber (LOL it’s my slowest machine, by far, now). I called my friend Tatsuya at IO Data (peripherals company) and got the 411 about the item (solid) and the shop (again, solid, he told me about their buying practices – which I agree with). I talked the guy at the counter down to 165,000 but felt there was still wiggle room. I took a break and got 160,000 out of the bank. BAM! I slapped 16 bills on the counter – no subtlety today, sir – and did a take it or leave it. The manager smiled and took the money. I walked out with a laptop that was worth more than I paid for it even a year later (although I should state that I got a makers warranty instead of the shop warranty – no biggie).
Showing the money – actually putting down or flashing the cash – has occasionally failed me. When it did, it was embarassing as hell when I was with other people or there was a crowd around, because that’s another factor, the audience. In some situations, the shop will not deal with you in front of other people, sometimes because they have a “no-bargaining” policy (when it’s time to use the “this is Osaka, what do you mean, ‘no bargaining,’ you Kanto wussy?” tactic), sometimes the guy you’re talking to isn’t earning commission and could give a fuck about making the sale (actually if you’re in a chain store, they almost definitely are NOT earning commission – but they do have to worry about sales quotas), and sometimes making a low-profit sale in front of a crowd just isn’t in the store’s best interest. It is not possible to know the reason for deal breakers all of the time, but it’s good to relect upon in the interest of sharpening your bargaining skills.
I love bargaining in foreign countries as well, in countries where it’s practiced, at least. You can tell if a store is good or not by their willingness or unwillingness to bargain with you. You see, some areas have been completely ruined by affluent tourists. If a street vendor greets you in Japanese, that’s usually a bad sign. If sales tag are written in more than one Germanic language, escape!
Cosmic Buddha’s next bargaining practice session is scheduled for January 7th-9th, 2004, in Seoul. Bring on the Prada wallets, I need one to match the “genuine” Speedmaster I bought in Phuket!