My trip to Asia – the Final Post: ROBOT RESTAURANT
SO i’m betting everyone who has been following along is as exhausted and jet lagged as I WAS when I got home–lol. But I swear – this is the last post and the final time you’ll see be babbling about China…but today we’re just talking about Tokyo, Japan.
The flight from China to Tokyo was not LONG but still longer than I expected. If you look at a map, Japan looks like it’s ‘just a little way in that direction’, but is in fact a 2.5 hour flight. The experience in Japan is night and day from China. Taxis drivers have lace doilies on their seat back and wear white gloves. Everyone is polite beyond belief, bowing as you pass (mostly in hotels and restaurants) to the point of embarrassment for we Savage Americans. In New England as you may be aware, we mostly pretend no one exists except ourselves when passing people in public.
____
The stores and restaurants are, for lack of a better word, STACKED on top of each other in buildings. You know how here you walk along and find the shop you’re looking for mostly at street level? Well in Tokyo, you have to look UP as they take up what here you would imagine to be office space in buildings.
You can see below, it’s like 7,8..even 9 shops all piled high.
I kind of wanted to try this Burger King Squid Ink Burger, to be honest! It’s colored with the squid ink and charcoal.
Some of the sights on the way to the Robot restaurant, to which even Anthony Bourdain paid a visit.
I don’t know what goes on in Girls Bar Happiness, but I can imagine.
Why we didn’t go see Tank Girls I will never know.
Some crappy goodies you can win inside an arcade. Who wants a gold mini-vibration stick? Or bunny jammed inside a fuzzy sleeve adorned with a satin bow?
Bootleg DVD’s for everyone!!! HORRAY!!
___
I have no idea what this place was offering up.
Hard to decide where to go and what to do, no?
____
So lets discuss fake, plastic food. There is a lot of it and they have raised it to an art form. There is in fact, a store that SELLS what I would call ‘fake food model kits’ to make your own fake food at home.
Did I buy one?
Of course I did.
You can read more about ‘replica’ food here
____
Why, here’s a hotel we did NOT stay at!! But i’m sure it would have been FINE….
And they offer Day Time Service, which is always nice.
More visual mayhem.
A dia=smal staircase to god knows where, but they’re open!
_____
Ahhh, yes- so the Robot Restaurant. I guess I could TRY and explain this but I still am not really certain what we saw or what on earth was happening. I will tell you this though, it was VERY memorable.
So this lounge was closed, but the first thing we saw when we entered. My head starting hurting immediately. Is that Siegfried and Roy I see sitting in back?
This here was just the foyer where you waited for the elevator. My dentist has a similar design scheme in his waiting room, which is very relaxing.
The lounge we actually waited in complete with spinning, golden chair-shell-things. And more mirrors than inside Liberace’s brain. Actually, I think maybe we WERE inside his brain….
The lounge band. You know–just a couple of guitar playing cyborgs. Imagine for a moment that’s you job…just sayin’.
I have to tell you, standing in this place was SO visually overwhelming, even now I can’t fully wrap my head around it all. (Keep in mind the images on the walls are constantly moving as they are all video screens and nearly everything is reflective!)
Even the walk down to the show floor was mind-bending. Why more people don’t tumble and fall is beyond me.
And so the show begins….
It started with some vague, tribal theme with a lot of ear splitting drumming.
And a lot of yelling….
Then of course, a woman on a glass-encrusted horse came out along with ‘Battlestar Galactica’ type creatures and a lot of laser beams. Transfixed, I stared into one too long and lost sight an eye, but it was worth it.
The staff then scurries along the sides where we sat putting up protective plastic chains to create the ring for the boxing match (kind of like a live Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots.)
There was so much visual over-stimulation on all sides (ceiling as well) that i’m surprised more people don’t have mini-strokes or epilepsy attacks.
Then a woman on a dragon came out…
And a gorilla carried by a huge rainbow colored moth…
As well as a shark that ate one of the ‘bad’ girls.
And a room-sized snake who hissed a lot but politely didn’t eat anybody as far as I can recall.
Sone more scary, reflective robots.
When they started projecting the dancers on the walls it felt a little too much like a white slavery auction.
Then the shit hit the fan as giant robot women-cars the height of the room rolled around with lasers and dancing and pounding rock music.
And a LED candy-colored tank.
I’m still confused.
_____
And well, there you have it! If you’ve joined in on each post I really appreciate it and hope you had fun seeing what I saw!!