When I lived in Japan in the 90s, I was really confused why all my Japanese friends would go to these arcades and play this strange game they called Mahjong. It seemed really boring and why not play with real tiles for free? But, after watching for a few minutes, my 16 year old body deeply understood.

Japan back then was (still is?) very perverse, and very censored. Imported playboy magazines had the female private parts physically scratched out. I'm not joking, someone had a job which required them to take a small metal rake and scratch out parts of a magazine, a magazine that was imported because it had western nudity. I really want to find someone that did that job back then and understand how they squared the sacrifices they made on a daily basis to protect the general population. Is this like being a veteran of a war, do people respect you for this difficult and impossible job you had to do?