Here’s a new chapter from Kunie Sakai’s Falling in Love. Just skip to the web page to download.

Well, this was an interesting chapter for me. Before reading this, I knew nothing about racing or pachinko. I’m not much of a gambler. ^__^ I’d seen pachinko parlors in movies, but, until now, I didn’t know what they were. I had to do a lot of research, and, even now, I’m not quite sure how a pachinko machine works. Here’s the wikipedia article, if you’re curious. I also watched many, many videos on youtube. If you go to the site and type “pachinko” in the search box, you’ll get a lot of interesting videos, like this one, for example. (I feel a little weird linking to someone’s video randomly, so I may remove this soon. I like this one because it’s 2003, which is when this story was written and, I assume, takes place.) I don’t think my translation of the sound effects really captures what it sounds like in there. There’s a lot of electronic sounds and the crash of metal balls; it’s almost like white noise. If you’ve never seen a pachinko machine, I strongly suggest you browse around and watch some of these videos. They’re very interesting.

Thanks to Wondermilky and all the people (who shall remain unnamed) who answered my questions about horse racing. (I’m a little less ignorant now.)