Purple Travel
[March 28 2014]
Experience The Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku, Tokyo
Opened in July 2012, Tokyo’s Robot Restaurant features over 40 bikini-clad dancers, with body requirements being that of a tall and curvaceous figure, an opening song from the film Spirited Away, and an abundance of robots, some as big as 3 meters tall. Created by female dancer Namie Osawa, the fantastical Robot Restaurant, situated in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district, is a new and high-tech take on the city’s decades-old cabaret scene. What makes it stand out from the rest is it’s capitalization of robot technology, something that unashamedly most of it’s 90 percent of foreign viewers can associate with Japan since they are a world leader of this innovation. The Robot Restaurant’s unabashedly excessive decor and glitz are a throwback to the boom of the mid-to-late 1980s, a time when the Japanese economy was the envy of the world and where the flashy Tokyo clubs catered to the newly rich. With a costing of 10 billion yen (close to 100 million dollars) and taking three years to complete, the Robot Restaurant’s 75 minute show is an experience to enjoy that brings stars like Pharrell Williams, Tim Burton, and J.J. Abrams coming back.
Text and photo Annabel Fernandes
