Crane Game

In Canada, you can sometimes find crane games at arcades, where you use the crane to pick up a stuffed animal in the hopes of winning it.  In Korea, they have the same thing, but much much cooler.  You can find these crane games outside of tons of convenience stores, and the prizes in them can range from lame key chains, to pretty sweet stuff like mp3 players and electric razors.  For one dollar, you can get six attempts at picking up a prize. Each prize is held inside a little wire box/cage and you need to pick up that box with the crane.  They will often put weights inside the boxes to make them more difficult to pick up.

I've been almost addicted to these things since we arrived.  Not to the point where I'm wasting tons of money on them, but it is hard for me to pass on without seeing what prizes are inside and giving it a try.  Initially, I couldn't win anything.  It seemed like some of the cranes were really weak and couldn't pick up the prizes very well.  For the longest time, I wasn't able to win anything.  Kristin won on one of her first tries, so I set a goal of winning something before the end of the year.  

Great news, I managed to achieve my goal as I won a nice ashtray at a convenience store just beside my apartment.  This happened to be the same place Kristin won her prize.  We came to the conclusion that this crane game was the shit, and the crane itself was clearly the most powerful in our neighborhood.  Obviously, if its the best, you have to keep playing it.  I've been back a couple times in the last week, and I own that crane now.  I've since won two more times, increasing my win total to 3.  Last night I won a nice utility knife, and today during a little break from school, I won a little box of candles and incense.  Ya, I know that sounds pretty lame, but you shouldn't judge me on the prizes I've won, but instead on my amazing ability to have three wins in the past week.  When you win, you need to bring the prize inside to the store owner so they can take it out of the little cage.  I'm certain that if I keep up this pace, I won't be allowed to play on that machine anymore.  Now that my goal has been easily surpassed, my new goal is to win 5 more times before New Years.  Surely amongst all these future wins will be a prize that will actually be worth a bit of money.