There is little glamor at Kawasaki Racetrack. Under grubby baseball caps, cigarettes and pencil stubs are jammed behind the ears of tense punters. The odor of ramen wafts along the betting slip-littered corridors and stairways under the stands.
The racetrack terraces host a variety of customers: An elderly man curses his bad luck in the previous race; a teenage boy busily scribbles down a request from someone calling his cellphone; and a young couple get racy on their own.
There's no nonsense here, no horsing around. "Oi, foreigner!" bellows a rotund punter from the back of the line as I try to make sense of the automatic betting machines. "We haven't got all %*$#ing day!"