Wowie, what a coincidence. I was just thinking about this the other day. I think I saw something related to this when I visited Japan in the summer. I visited Taito Station in Akihabara (I wanted to check out an arcade) and while I didn't see the pinball machine itself, the guy sat behind me was wearing a t-shirt with a photograph of it printed on the back, I didn't see the front. It was a candid, almost unprofessional photo. The machine was as described in the op and it looked as if it was in a concrete cellar, definitely concrete at least. Above the photo it said 'Junji Ito Pinball Machine' and beneath was something in kanji, I don't know what. It just struck me as a cool shirt, I remember thinking 'what a cool guy'. Obviously I didn't take a picture, that'd be weird. I was struck though, I actually tried googling it in my hotel room but nothing came of it. Maybe it was custom made, but then again my attempts at Japanese google-fu were probably very poor and I didn't look into that much.
HA I can't believe that friggin machine exists. When I was a senior in hs (circa 2003) a dude in my art class was constantly drawing this thing. He worked it into every project, labeled it like that, too. "Junji Ito Pinball Machine." I always assumed it was a band. Or a bit. He had that "edgy for the sake of being edgy" kinda thing going on. Now that I think about it, he did tell me his parents took him to Tokyo all the time. I think he had family there. To be clear, Pinball Mike and I were not friends but I think he assumed we were because I wore a lot of black and had a Nine Inch Nails patch on my messenger bag. Love how that works. High school in the midwest suburbs, baby!
I guess Pinball Mike is excused (a little) now that I know this machine inspires such, uhh devotion
It's funny, the overall association with his weird shit was a lot of what kept me from getting into Junji Ito later, in college. And yes, he did eventually get in trouble with the teacher for "not adhering to the spirit" of the assignments
I have to imagine that if there's a t-shirt, there have to be more folks out there with some concrete details on this thing. I guess it could just be an at-home iron-on job but that seems like more than someone who happened to see it only once or something (like the original Reddit post) would get up to. Very odd (shirt sounds dope tho - I'd buy one).