Pharao

Gambling Away Their Lives on the Edge of the Rest of
the World

by Neil Rosenblatt

Gambling isn't exactly legal in Japan; which is to say, winning at gambling is not legal. The casinos of downtown Tokyo play, in clichéd terms, a cat-and-mouse game with the law. In real terms they play hide and seek. The yakuza, or Japanese Mafia, keep the streets safe and grease the palms of the right people. In exchange, the police play along, averting their eyes and missing the obvious. When political pressure gets high, the policemen count to ten and then scream, "Ready or not, here we come!" The casinos hide.The music of Aoi Usagi carries me back to my days in the ghetto. The nostalgic tune (it's a love song, of all things) and mysterious words bring
back all that was strange about that summer. All the funny things that happened in the bar
between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m., on the waves of delirious fatigue and caffeine stimulation, now seem
to be a little unreal. But they were all real.

Aoi Usagi (Blue Bunny) takes me back to the Pharao; to get there, you'll have to
take the train. Get off at Roppongi, the area The Tokyo Night Guide affectionately
called the "Gaijin Ghetto" (foreigner ghetto). If there is a negative stereotype of foreigners in
Japan, this is where it started. Here is where U.S. Navy men on leave come to drink beer, and
have their one-time flings with Asia. Here is where young Japanese girls come to have their
flings as well. This is the place where young travelers-like me-come with ninety day
"tourist" visas to make the money needed to travel the rest of Asia. It's home to most of Japan's
drug dealers, many of its homeless people, and all of its "naturally" large-breasted women.

It's said that foreigners are omnipresent in the Gaijin Ghetto. And, by the
foreigners' boisterous nature, it often seems that way. But look a little more closely and you'll
find that foreigners actually only frequent about half of the bars and casinos in the area-the
half that make them welcome. The other establishments, like Pharao, subtly steer foreigners
away, claiming that they are too curious, too loud, and that they make the natives nervous.

Tucked safely away in this non-foreigner heaven, I got my education serving free drinks and
gambling incentives, to Japanese men tired from the rigors of a straitjacket society. Pharao is
the tamest of the three casinos in its alley. To its right is One Eyed Jacks, the place for
men to see bare-breasted women; and a little further down is Seventh Heaven, the
place to see completely bare women. Pharao is higher class. The dealers all wear tuxedos and
there's no glitzy stage in the middle to distract clients from the important business at hand:
losing money. My job, too, was strictly professional. They didn't hire me for my novelty or for
translation purposes. I was a warm body on the right day with bartending skills and enough
Japanese to fake it through a ten minute interview.

Aoi Usagi lands me behind the bar at 5:36 p.m., twenty-four minutes until opening. It's the seventh song on the "pep mix," which means that the bar should be ready for business and the tables set. The jackies (blackjack dealers), rollers (roulette), and floor watchers, most barely past the drinking age (twenty) or close to it, mill about in half-buttoned tuxedo shirts reading either soft-core porno magazines or hard-core porno comics. They eat salmon-stuffed rice balls from the 7-11 around the corner. Many of them sit at the bar and order free drinks; iced coffee for the ones who just dragged themselves out of bed, isotonic power drinks for those who came from another job. By 5 a.m. it will be coffee for all.

My other job in Japan was a day job, so Friday nights I pulled twenty-four hour work shifts
between the two places. But it was a rare day when I would win bragging rights for most
continuous hours without sleep. Take-san came straight from college classes every day.
Bunny-san came from her job at the pin-ball palace. And Anan-san<, the cook,
usually took the cake by working seventy-two hours, straight through the weekend, so he could
get time at the sewing machines for design school.

At five minutes to six, the bright lights would go down in the main hall and up behind the
bar, displaying a gaudy scene complete with giant mirror and lots of shiny brass. I once passed a
similar arrangement of mirrors and brass, still shiny and new, waiting to be taken away by the
garbage men. Things in the ghetto get about fourteen minutes in the spotlight if they're lucky. I
wonder how long it will be before Pharao's mirrors and brass find themselves under a street
light before garbage day.

As the music of our "pep mix" comes to a close just before opening, we all gather around in a
large circle, much like a baseball team before the big game. Our hands are clenched
respectfully behind our straight backs. All the players are suited up by now. The shoes are tied
and the ties are clipped. They waited for me once, all eyes to the one who held up the team. My
face turned red, more embarrassed than at any other time at the Pharao. In Japan the saying is
"The protruding nail is-embarrassed."

The manager steps to the fore and makes some important sounding speech. I never understood
it, not because of the language barrier, but because he always spoke in a hushed voice as if he
was afraid the wrong person might be listening. All I know is that at the end we would clap as
selected players (presumably those who had outwitted the customers the night before) received mysterious envelopes.

Then the manager would wish us luck and choose who would lead the cheers for the day (lest
we forget our lines during the night):
"Sato."
"Yes, sir."
"Go ahead."
"Welcome (Sato), welcome (all); Welcome very much, welcome very much; Thank-you, Thank-you; Please be good to us, Please be good to us; Please be good to us again today very much, Please be good to us again today very much!"

And then on to the business of the day-making money. Everything is set up with the main
goal in mind: cater to the customer, make him feel comfortable, take his money. Every few
minutes a pretty waitress named Bunny-san, dressed in either a long flowing dress or a
rubber fifties-length mini, comes by to offer more drinks or to offer encouragement. The men seem
to enjoy the waitresses' presence.

For me they were at first a source of discomfort. During the dinner break, the deep couches
and short skirts allowed no possibility of modesty. This didn't seem to bother them, though;
they were over that long ago. Nor did their names, which were another source of discomfort for
me. After being introduced to three of four of them, all with the same strange name,
"Buuuunny-san," even I caught on. Bunny wasn't their name; it was their title.

Many a man (and a few women) have gambled fortunes away at the Pharao by playing miscalculated odds. One night I watched a well-educated man, maybe an engineer, make a bundle at the roulette table. He covered the board and played the logical odds. By last throw he had five thousand dollars. And, with his luck, how could he lose? One thousand went down on each of five squares around the board. He had the verticals covered, the horizontals, and three out of four areas. The ball landed and five thousand dollars was swept away. According to the odds advertised in Hoyles, with the odds he was playing, a depressing miracle had occurred. According to the real odds, everything was quite normal.

The roulette rollers play a little game every night after close. They see who can fill up each
of the thirty-eight squares fastest. Usually not more than two chips go on any one square.
That's not because there's exactly a one in thirty-eight chance of landing on a specific
square: ten hours a night, six days a week, one roll a minute, your fingers get pretty accurate.
One unlucky customer. But, like the others, he's addicted; he'll be back.

Anyway, winning at gambling isn't legal in Japan. There's a window for customers to buy
chips at the Pharao, but none to sell them back. He surely wouldn't have expected to make
money here.

Many of Pharao's best customers come in six or seven nights a month. But none could ever beat
Mr. S., who made it six or seven days a week, ten hours each night. We never got to know Mr.
S.'s real name or much about his job. Like so many things at the Pharao, it was better that way.
He'd sit up there on his stool wiping his eyes and waiting for the time to pass. Coffee: black
was how he liked it. We always made a fresh pot for him; he was a special customer. Mr. S.
would sometimes take a few chips and play the roulette board. But he never wandered far from
home base, near us.

He was such a good customer that when other patrons had a question about the rules, the
dealers (who knew "nothing") would send them his direction rather than towards a manager.
Rumor had it that Mr. S. had a big pocket full of money. But where he and the other customers
went once they got around the corner, or what they did, was always a mystery. So many hours
in that bar and I never learned his name or job.

I suppose that's not true. Though he was modest about it, I think I watched him do his job
every night. His boss was probably the same as mine. And he was probably the most important
employee in the casino. After all, who in their right mind would gamble thousands of dollars
without ever expecting to win? There had to be some way for the customers to trade their chips
back at the end of the night. I think that was his job.

One Sunday night the Pharao closed down early--at 6:20 p.m. I had just started wondering
where Mr. S. was when the manager rushed down the stairs and tapped the roller at the
roulette table on the shoulder, then went straight back to the "jackies" and baccarat dealers.
The whole thing took five minutes, no more, everyone out. The next day my best and most
trusted friend told me with a straight face that the managers had been tired from surfing that
day. Quite impressive, though, to close so fast just so the managers could get some sleep. That
night I saw a policeman. He seemed to be yelling numbers or something. But it was hard to tell.
His hands were covering his face.

I don't know if the Pharao has closed early any other day since then, or even if it's still
there. I only know how it was when it was time for me to go. I explained my story to the
manager. I had to get back to school. My parents were being unreasonable and were forcing me.

The manager didn't seem surprised or upset. The Pharao had served its fleeting purpose for
me, as do all the Pharaos for all those who walk in and out of their doors: a place to make
money for school or marriage; a place to spend it; a place to learn, to relax, to remember, to
forget; a place to while away the hours, in the comfort of strangers.


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