Report by John

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

On day two, after leaving Playground 20, we proceeded to our third pinball location - Toy Sapiens. We arrived in the JR Harajuku train station (JR 原宿駅) around 2pm. 

Harajuku Station

This district is a famous shopping area, so it is always crowded.

Takeshita Street near Harajuku

Then we had a late lunch at the Tendon Soba Udon restaurant. As usual, the meal was delicious and did not disappoint us.

Tendon restaurant

Late lunch

Toy Sapiens is not located on one of the main streets, so it took me some time to find them.

Toy Sapiens

There were two pins there: Batman (Stern, 2008) and Iron Man (Stern, 2010).  Although I saw these two pins in the American Pool in Hong Kong before, I was still excited.  Why?  It was because they looked like brand new machines in excellent working condition.   In addition, the replay scores were quite low and so it was not difficult for me to get replays.   \(^o^)/

The Iron Man near the entrance

A closer look at Iron Man

The Batman in another corner of the shop

A closer look at Batman

It seems that these two pins are really just part of the decoration of the shop. So they didn't get much play and could therefore be kept in good condition.

According to my Japanese pinball friends, they seldom go to Toy Sapiens to play the pinballs. This was because Toy Sapiens is not an amusement centre, and they could not get too excited when playing the games.  I strongly agree with this. You can imagine what happens if you always need to suppress your emotions when playing.

Apart from pinballs there were many amazing toys inside the shop, such as Marvel Heroes, Batman, Terminator and Predator. 

Inside Toy Sapiens

Iron Man

A Terminator T-101

Toy displays

Here is some additional information about Toy Sapiens:

• Transportation: A ten minute walk from the JR Harajuku train station (JR 原宿駅)
  
  
• Business hours: 11am - 7pm
  
  
• Website: www.toysapiens.jp
  
  
• Comments: Both Batman & Iron Man were in excellent working condition.

UPDATE - May 2015 by Gavin Maxwell

Unfortunately they no longer have any machines on site. I've been there a few times, but two weeks back I wandered over to get a fix and the machines were gone.

My Japanese isn't good enough to understand the story, but bottom line is no more pinball at Toy Sapiens.

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