Robot.

By Katie Jacobs

You can be sure you won’t have seen anything as crazy as the cabaret-style show at Robot before.

Robot Restaurant
1-7-1 Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku
Shinjuku
www.robot-restaurant.com

Never has the name of a venue been so misleading. The price of entry includes a bento box which is the least edible food in Tokyo. But don’t let this put you off. If you’re looking for weird and crazy Tokyo, this is it. Located in Kabukicho, one of the entertainment districts of Shinjuku, Robot Restaurant is a cabaret show. Think Japanese girls clad in bikinis and skimpily dressed marching girls riding giant fighting robots. The owners are rumoured to have spent over a million dollars, which seems to have bought them 1 million glittering tiles for the floors and walls. You’d be hard pressed to find anything like this elsewhere in the world. I don’t want to spoil it by saying too much – just go. Afterwards ask one of the Japanese businessmen scuttling into the nearby clubs for the way to Golden Gai – a warren of tiny traditional bars that harks back to old Tokyo – the perfect contrast to Robot Restaurant.