Casinos in Japan

What counts as a casino in Japan

If you are picturing a Las Vegas style gaming floor when you think of a casino in Japan, there is exactly one on the way, and it is not open yet. Land-based casinos are legal inside integrated resorts under strong controls, and the first of these, MGM Osaka, is under construction with an opening target of 2030¹. Until then, no conventional casino with table games and slot machines exists anywhere in the country.

What Japan has instead, in enormous numbers, is pachinko. Pachinko parlors are allowed to work around the gambling laws through crafty transaction structures and a sort of cultural carve-out, and punters will find thousands of them across the country³. They look, sound and spend like casinos: rows of flashing machines, cash changing hands at a counter, and winners walking out with prizes. For most people in Japan, this is the casino experience, and it is fully open to visitors and foreign residents.

One thing to be clear about: online casinos are a different matter. There are no licensed and regulated online casinos inside Japan, and playing at an offshore site from within Japan is treated as the crime of gambling, even if the casino itself is legally operated overseas⁵. Customers who used online casinos have actually been arrested on gambling charges in Japan⁵. The Consumer Affairs Agency and consumer organizations have both stated this plainly⁶. Many offshore casinos welcome players from Japan, offer Japanese language sites and list Japanese Yen among supported currencies, but connecting from inside Japan is illegal regardless of where the site is licensed³. If you want to gamble legally in Japan, the pachinko parlor is the place, and soon, the Osaka resort.

When MGM Osaka does open, the games on offer will be the familiar international set. The permitted casino games under Japan's rules include table games such as casino war alongside the standard table and machine lineup⁸.

MGM Osaka: the one integrated resort under construction

The big story in Japanese gambling is MGM Osaka, the country's first integrated resort. Officials held a groundbreaking ceremony in April 2024, and the resort is set to open by 2030¹. It is a full resort complex, not just a casino: hotel, dining, entertainment and a gaming floor under one roof, on the man-made island of Yumeshima in Osaka Bay.

The numbers are large even by international standards. The casino floor is planned at 23,293 square meters, packed with 470 gaming tables and 6,400 electronic gaming machines, with the floor built to take 6,000 gaming machines plus table games¹. That puts it in the same league as major Macau and Singapore floors.

Entry rules differ by who you are. Japanese patrons must pay admission fees of 3,000 yen each to the national government and the local government, 6,000 yen in total, valid for 24 hours². The levy has a history: the original proposal set the entry fee at 2,000 yen, and it was raised to the higher level of 6,000 yen before being submitted to the Diet⁹. The law behind it applies its entry limits, entry fee and lending restrictions to Japanese nationals and foreigners residing in Japan, while entrants other than foreigners without residence in Japan pay the 3,000 yen levy per entry to the casino gaming area¹⁰. In plain terms: foreign visitors who do not live in Japan get in without the levy; Japanese citizens and foreign residents pay it¹².

For the full picture on the resort, its timeline and what the gaming floor will hold, see the dedicated page on MGM Osaka.

Pachinko parlors: Japan's de facto casinos

Walk down almost any shopping street in a Japanese city and you will hear a pachinko parlor before you see it: a wall of noise, bright signage and automatic doors opening onto a dim, smoky hall of hundreds of machines. These parlors are Japan's de facto casinos, and they are everywhere, in the thousands³.

The games come in two families. Pachinko machines fire small steel balls up through a vertical playfield, and you win more balls if they land in the right holes. Pachislot, or Japanese slot machines, look like Western slots but have a skill element: you stop each reel yourself with a button. Both are covered in detail on the pachinko and pachislot pages.

The machines themselves are a culture of their own. Many are tie-up machines built around manga, anime and films. Kaiji, developed by Fields, is based on the gambling manga Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji and Tobaku Hakairoku Kaiji¹³. CR Mister Marick, developed by Maruhon, is loaded with animated reach sequences with names like dialogue advance notice, fire reach, symbol prophecy reach, dove reach, hand power reach and mysterious helper appears¹⁴. Azteca, a B-CT type pachislo machine released by Electro Coin Japan, is another long-running favorite¹⁵.

One unusual example shows how flexible the format is: a pachinko hall called Paradise opened in February 2017 inside the Paradise Garden Sasebo resort hotel in Sasebo, targeting foreign hotel guests, with machine guides in English, Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese. It kept unusual hours to match hotel check-in, opening 16:00 to 22:40, and closed on days when there were no foreign guests¹⁶.

For how the parlors work, where they are and how the prize exchange system operates, see pachinko parlors in Japan.

What to expect inside

A first visit to a pachinko hall is easier than it looks from the street. You exchange cash for balls or credits at the machine or a counter, play, and either feed the winnings back in or cash out. The key number to look for is the unit rate: how many balls or credits you get per yen, and the reverse rate when you exchange out.

Rates vary by machine and by hall. A parlor in Kanuma, Tochigi, for example, lists pachinko units at 200 yen for 175 balls and 100 yen for 450 balls, and slot units at 1,000 yen for 90 credits and 500 yen for 225 credits¹⁷. At Dynam Yaita, the pachinko and slot unit rate is 500 yen for 90, with an exchange rate figure of 485 posted for the store¹⁸. Higher per-ball rates mean your money lasts longer, so low-denomination machines are the friendlier starting point for a beginner.

Halls range from a few dozen to several hundred machines. Dynam Yaita in Tochigi runs 320 pachinko machines and 160 slot machines¹⁸. Niraku Higashiyamato in Tokyo has 276 pachinko machines and 233 slot machines, while Niraku Kamikitadai, also in Higashiyamato, has 406 pachinko machines and 237 slot machines¹⁹.

Practical notes for a first visit:

• Bring yen in cash. Card payment for play credit is not the norm.
• Halls are loud. Earplugs are often handed out at the door, and regulars bring their own.
• Smoking is common in many halls, though some chains now run fully non-smoking stores, such as one APAN CLUB location in Nisshin that was the first fully non-smoking venue in its area²⁰.
• Staff will help you get a machine started if you look lost; a little gesture goes a long way.
• Machine guides and signage are mostly in Japanese only, except at a few foreigner-focused halls like the Sasebo one above.

The major pachinko chains: Maruhan, DYNAM and Niraku

Three chains dominate the pachinko landscape, and you will see their names across the country.

Maruhan is the biggest name in the industry, with halls across Japan. Its pages cover entry rules, the games you will find and how to get to individual halls.

DYNAM is the largest chain by store count and runs two distinct store formats: regular Dynam stores centered on conventional high-payout machines, and Dynam Yuttari Kan stores that mainly feature low-payout, low-denomination machines⁴. If you want to play cheaply and quietly, Yuttari Kan is the format to look for. The chain publishes information on new store openings and renovated reopenings on its site⁴.

Niraku has a strong presence in Tokyo, with locations including Ota Nagahara in Kamiike-dai, Musashimurayama Inadaira, Nakano Sun Mall No. 2, Higashiyamato and Kamikitadai, all listed with addresses and machine counts on its Tokyo store page¹⁹.

Tokyo and Kanto chains: YASUDA and Garden

In Tokyo and the surrounding Kanto region, two chains stand out for accessibility.

YASUDA runs several halls right in the city. YASUDA5 sits in front of Oyama Station's south exit on the Tobu Tojo line, just across the level crossing, with 250 slot machines. YASUDA7 in Higashiyamato, Ikebukuro, is a 3 minute walk from Ikebukuro Station's east exit and has 338 slot machines. YASUDA9, also in east Ikebukuro, is a 2 minute walk from JR Ikebukuro Station's east exit with 216 slot machines²¹. If you are staying in central Tokyo, the Ikebukuro pair is about as easy as pachinko gets.

Garden, operated by Yuraku Co., Ltd., runs pachinko and slot halls across Saitama, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Ibaraki prefectures, including the Western halls in the Kasai and Gyotoku areas of eastern Tokyo²².

Aichi's APAN CLUB

In and around Nagoya, APAN CLUB is the chain to know. The operator runs seven venues in Toyota City alone, including APAN CLUB Ueno, a low-denomination specialized store at 5-1-13 Uenocho, Toyota City²³. Outside Toyota City it runs further halls in Seto, Minokamo, Chiryu and Nisshin, including APAN CLUB Libre in Owari-Seto, reachable on 0561-84-1311²⁰. The chain has also opened the region's first fully non-smoking venue, in Nisshin²⁰.

Other chains and independent halls

Beyond the big names, Japan's pachinko landscape is a patchwork of regional chains and independents, each with its own character. This site carries in-depth pages on all of them:

What to know: Entry rules, games and getting there

Each page covers the same practical ground: what machines the halls run, the unit rates on offer, opening hours, parking, smoking policy and how to reach the nearest hall by train or car.

Before you go

A few things worth knowing before your first pachinko visit or your first look at the Osaka project:

• Who can play. Pachinko parlors are open to everyone, including tourists on a short stay. The MGM Osaka casino, when it opens, will admit Japanese nationals and foreign residents only against the 6,000 yen levy, while foreign visitors without Japanese residence enter without it².
• What to avoid. Online casinos are not a legal option from inside Japan, regardless of where the site is licensed, and players have been arrested for using them⁵.
• Where to start cheaply. Dynam Yuttari Kan stores and low-denomination halls like APAN CLUB Ueno are built for smaller budgets⁴.
• How to check a hall before you go. Most chains list every hall, with machine counts, unit rates and addresses, on their official sites, and the P-WORLD database covers halls across the country.

For the wider picture of legal gambling in Japan, including horse racing, boat racing, keirin and the lottery, see the gambling in Japan overview, and the visitor's guide if you are in the country as a tourist.