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ZOOLS |
| Location: 1st floor, Tokuda Building, 3-21-2, Suginami, Nishiogikita, Tokyo, Japan. Report by John During the Chinese New Year holidays in February 2013, I visited Tokyo with my wife on a leisure trip. On day one, Mr.Ito (伊藤さん) and I initially visited the Neverland amusement centre from the morning until late afternoon. After leaving the Neverland amusement centre in a satisfied mood at 5:30pm, we walked to the JR Toyota station to meet my wife. This was the first time my wife had met Mr. Ito. Although he is a father of two, my wife felt he looked like he was still a high school graduate. I was quite jealous of that. Afterward, all three of us took a train to our last pinball location of the day. It was Zools Darts and Music Bar which is around 20 minutes away by JR train.
Although the bar was not very spacious, its decoration was quite elegant.
There was a single electro-mechanical pinball - a Bally Freedom - and two darts machines there. I should have seen the Freedom pin when I was a child, however I could not recall where and when I might have seen it, which is something I regret.
I am a crazy lover of EM pins, so I started playing the Freedom immediately after entering the bar. I was not aware, until my wife reminded me about it, that we hadn't ordered our meal yet. There was a small blackboard beside the Freedom pin which listed the top seven scores. The highest so far was 193,430 pts．Unfortunately, both of Mr. Ito and I could only reach around 100,000 points at that night - prehaps because this was our first time playing this game.
There were no other guests during our stay, so we could enjoy our drinks and meal in a relaxed manner.
Finally, the fun day ended around 7:30pm. We took the same train with Mr Ito towards Shinjuku (新宿) and said goodbye to him in the middle of the journey when we reached Nakano station. Originally, I also had an appointment with another Japanese master pinball player - Mr. Yasuda (安田さん) - on that day (18th February). However, he had not been contactable during the whole long weekend (16th-18th). Surprisingly, Mr. Yasuda contacted Mr. Ito some time near midnight and suggeted he meet both of us two days later in the Mikado near the JR Takadanobaba station (高田馬場駅). This meant that the Chinese New Year pinball tournament was not cancelled, just postponed! (^o^) Here is some more information about Zools Darts and Music Bar:
The only change since my first visit in February 2013 is that the Freedom game has been replaced by two different games:
Others elements remain unchanged, including the following:
This is one of my strongly-recommended pinball locations to visit when you want to meet friends in Tokyo city.
© Pinball News 2013 |
