Among English speakers on Reddit, it is known that Japan is a closed, insular culture, where people have less knowledge of world events compared to citizens of other industrialized countries with similar education levels. It may be because of the island mentality.

I'm Canadian. I learned on Reddit that in Macau, a lot of Chinese people from the mainland come to gamble. But unlike in Las Vegas, gamblers aren't drinking cocktails or going to stage shows, they go to Macau strictly to gamble. They'll drink water and tea and juice while gambling. So, I tried looking for Japanese-language articles about how serious gambling is in Macau, using keywords like マカオ, 賭事, 娯楽,投資, but couldn't find anything. So, it makes me feel that Japanese people aren't talking about current events happening in the world, like people in America or Canada or France, etc. might.

What's more, the culture of gambling in China is as an investment, not amusement, which explains why gamblers in Macau are so serious, but gamblers in Las Vegas see it as fun. I always learned that the house always wins, so you should gamble only for fun, not to make money (the lottery authority stresses this point through an awareness campaign called "Gamesense"). In college, in a probability theory course, our instructor taught us how much money you can lose in roulette. Awareness about problem gambling, from what I've seen, seems to be only a western thing. We have a lot of Chinese immigrants where I live and gambling addictions are perverse, because there isn't a stigma towards excessive gambling in China, and talking about your feelings or mental health is not the norm in China (I would assume in Korea and Japan as well).

I don't know how serious Japanese people take pachinko or horse racing, do they do it for fun or to make money?