Shinjuku Robot Restaurant Review

The Shinjuku Robot Restaurant is odd. I’ll give it that. It’s not quite a restaurant, and not quite Japanese either.
You might ask why an Australian technology site is reviewing a restaurant in the heart of Tokyo.
That would be a perfectly reasonable question, and the answer largely has to do with the target market for this particular restaurant, which is, undeniably, western audiences, including Australian ones. There are some rather fluffy pieces around describing the place, but few of what I’d call reviews, so I figured there was a need for such a thing. I attended the Robot Restaurant last week, and was surrounded almost exclusively by english-speaking westerners, including a number of Australians there for the experience of a “Robot Restaurant”.
A quick word of advice to the guy from Melbourne complaining loudly about them serving Asahi beer. Firstly, you’re in Tokyo, and they’re serving Japanese beer. Why were you surprised? Also, just because it’s Asahi doesn’t mean it’s “alcohol free”…
That minor snark aside, attending the Robot Restaurant will cost you a base 6,000 Yen, or around $63 at current conversion rates. That gets you in the door for the stage show, but not the restaurant part, which I’ll get to later. You can only book online or by phone, although there is the promise of ticket sales at the door. Having wandered past the day before I went there, the queues suggest that not many tickets get offered on the day, so if you’re keen, you’ll have to navigate the website, which is on the messy side, especially on mobile devices.

That same mess appeared at least on my visit to extend to actually getting in, which involved queueing across two separate venues while they lined everyone up and took money based on a printout of those who had booked. There’s only so long you can watch a couple of Daft Punk-esque rolling robots bounce around in the rain before it loses some charm.
The show itself splits into two parts; there’s a “pre-show” on the third floor, which is really just an excuse to sell drinks while a floor band plays some tunes. Sure, they’re in silly robot suits, which is kind of the point, but then they were playing (on my visit) Glenn Medeiros’ “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You”

Imagine this played by a guy in a classic Battlestar Galactica suit, and you’re there

As noted, that’s really just an excuse to put people in seats and sell them relatively expensive beer. Those around me didn’t seem to mind, but I was somewhat irked simply because while the pre-show wasn’t much to look at, about half the room couldn’t see it anyway. The third floor’s a long rectangular room with the stage off to one side from the middle, which means if you’re at the ends, you can’t see much of anything.

That’s not so much a problem for the main show, which never really lets up long enough to let anything much sink in. There are dancing girls, robots, lots of flashing lights, songs, robot boxing, a short dramatic presentation (of definite Power Rangers quality), more songs and a bit of a photo opportunity with the robots after it’s all said and done.

It’s definitely an experience unlike anything I’ve done before, and that is something of a plus, but it’s not without its criticisms. The staging for the most part is fine, and there’s some very clever shifting of set pieces to make way for the next section of the show, although those also serve as another excuse to serve drinks.

I can’t say I was that wowed by the audio though. Not so much the performances, which in the show I saw covered Lady Gaga’s Telephone (quite well) and Psy’s Gagnam Style (about as well as could be expected), but the actual audio quality. It’s loud, and that’s to be expected, but it’s also heavily tuned for music rather than speech, and that meant that some of the commentary in the narrative sections was all but inaudible. Not that there’s much story to be had, but it’s something that’s generally not that hard to fix, especially in a small space like the robot restaurant.

Small is the right word to use here, too. The restaurant seats around 120, but they’re very small seats indeed. I’m not the world’s largest bloke, but I reckon I was sat behind that very gentleman, and he did not in any way look comfortable squished into his tiny seat. It’s crammed for capacity, and you’d be in real trouble if a fire broke out.

The “restaurant” moniker is also largely fabricated. You can pre-buy a Sushi box if that’s to your taste, but they’re not competitively priced or even on inspection all that well made — and bear in mind that you’re in Tokyo, where good sushi isn’t hard to find. You’re only going to be in there for two hours in any case, so I’d advise skipping the pre-booked meal and getting some decent nosh at any of the better eateries that are all around Shinjuku itself.

What of a final verdict? I’m a big fan of live theatre, and there is something entertaining in the Robot Restaurant, although I’m struck by the fact that it’s an experience very highly tailored towards Western tastes.

There’s a fair walk from the waiting lounge down to the main basement theatre space, and while I was walking I overheard a number of comments of how “weirdly Japanese” it was. I don’t entirely agree; Japan can do its own flavour of weird including techno-weird very well indeed, and it doesn’t entirely taste like this.

It’s entirely feasible to have a fun night out at the Robot Restaurant, but I’d challenge its authenticity as a “Japanese” experience. It’s the plastic fantastic fun-park version of Japan, maybe, and certainly only something that you’d do once.