I mean no offense in saying this, but in all honesty, if your casino contact cannot even make the distinction between 方 and 六, and to call the top character Japanese in origin... then he does not understand basic Chinese.

I don't know the origin of these chips and don't claim to, but I do know Chinese.

Now here's something else that some people may not know... part of the Japanese language is directly adapted from Chinese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji