Location: 4th floor of RaRa Building, 2-1-5 Sanno, Ota-ku, Tokyo, Japan
(東京都 大田区 山王2-1-5 ビルRaRa 4/F)
Report date: February 2013

Report by John

During the Chinese New Year holidays in February 2013, I visited Tokyo with my wife on my leisure trip.

On day two, we first visited the Banana Punch Karaoke Restaurant (バナナ パンチ レストラン) in the morning.   We arrived at it's home - the RaRa building - around 10:30am, but the Banana Punch was not open yet.  So, we had to stay in the McDonalds in the basement for a further 30 minutes.

JR Ōmori station

The RaRa Building

The entrance to Banana Punch

I ran into Banana Punch on the fourth floor at 11:00am sharp, before any other guests had arrived.

Inside Banana Punch

Facilities inside the bar

There were four pinballs there: Apollo 13 (Sega), Independence Day (Sega), Twister (Sega) and Goldeneye (Sega).   Unfortunately, the Apollo 13 and Twister were out of order at that moment. I was quite excited since I had never seen either a Twister or a Goldeneye before.

Apollo 13 and Independence Day

Twister and Goldeneye

The working conditions of both Goldeneye and Independence Day were acceptable.  In particular, the 2 flippers of the Independence Day were very powerful, although the 2 slingshots were very weak. In fact, weak slingshots favoured me, since it wasn't easy for the ball to go down the outlanes.  So it was not difficult for me to get replays.

The Independence Day backbox

Independence Day's playfield with large instruction decals on the apron

The dead Apollo 13

Goldeneye's backbox

The playfield from Goldeneye

The dead Twister

I stayed there for ninty minutes, and left around 12:30pm for my next pinball location, Playground 20 at Ebisu(恵比寿) of Shibuya-ku (渋谷区).

Here is some more information about Banana Punch:

• Transportation: One minute walk from the San Nō north exit of JR Ōmori station (JR大森駅 山王北口徒歩1分)
  
  
• Business hours: 11am - 5am
  
  
• Website: www.bananapunch.com
  
  
• Comments: Golden Eye and Independence Day were in acceptable working conditions.

© Pinball News 2013