while out on errands the other day, i found myself attracted to the sound and smell of engines running at a boat race course, and found myself slipping a 100y coin into the turnstiles to see what the action was like in person.
as someone who grew up with nascar, boat racing is probably the most inherently interesting of the great pillars of japanese gambling to me. I'm embarrassed by being too dumb for pachinko (which almost feels intentionally obtuse to get into, so that when you figure out its code, you feel like a member of the in-group who is smart enough to beat the system),
and boats are kind of just like cooler, possibly more ethical horses - if there were anime boats that made me cry with their stories of rivalry and courage it'd be no contest, but unfortunately it seems that the second season of the kancolle anime did not have a banger OP/ED like the first
and it's definitely fun, even at the local level, to just stand by the water and watch boats roaring by, practicing their Sonic Riders-esque rolling start, imagining what it's like to be a rider, jostled around by the waves like a toy in a bathtub. some children nearby laugh and point
then the call for the Real Race starts and suddenly the kids are gone, replaced by gaggles of 20-30 year old guys leaning over the railing, while a sea of elderly men clench bet tickets and newspapers from the viewing building.
I watch the racers drift around the first corner of a 3-lap race, camera snapping away with rapture. but over time, the voices of the youth slowly tune back into focus - their yells and pleads for racers to "stay put" or "stop trying to overtake"
I look at my bet ticket. 100 yen thrown down on the most probable bet line. It was a "for fun" bet. no harm if I lose this much, and if I win, I can buy an extra snack tonight.
so if it was for fun, why did I stop taking pictures when I realized that I might actually win?
why were my hands shaking as I went to cash my 300 yen payout without talking to a single person, watching people my age redeeming tickets that only paid out in bills compared to my coins. 6000y here, 10000y there. how much had that 6000y cost them?
do you ever think about that one NCAA college basketball player who sunk a garbage time shot just for fun and ended up ruining a 27-point-over spread? imagine being in the peak of your sport and the only thing you get paid in is death threats
my 100 yen "for fun" bet was someone else's 1000 yen or 10000 yen "for fun" bet. when does spending on fun stop being fun and start being unhealthy? i can feel this uncomfortable at just 100 yen and yet i consistently sink way more than 100 yen worth of time into machines that transform solid gameplay basics into repetitive chores for anime gembucks. when did this get in every corner of our life? i just wanna hear things go fast and vroom (and also i want firefly from honkai star rail hello)
before each race, they show on the giant monitor how many people bet on every single possible outcome. the bet I won, paying 3 to 1, was the single most popular bet for the entire race.
there were 12 races that day.
that 3 to 1 bet hit only once.