Loud tourist trap

DAY 12

(Reading time: 6 minutes)

Okinawa was hit by a super typhoon Trami, and it didn’t look good at all. As a temporary consequence further north, including Tokyo, there was persistent rain. And the typhoon was approaching…

But before the day of judgement, we still wanted to accomplish something, so we took our umbrellas and headed to Odaiba.

Odaiba is an artificial island built in Tokyo Bay, to which an automated driverless train takes you across Rainbow Bridge. The island was built back in the 19th century during the Tokugawa shogunate to serve as an outpost guarding against potential attacks on Tokyo from the sea. Today, Odaiba is one of the modern districts with the dominant presence of the extravagant Fuji TV building with its massive spherical structure.

Yes, in the picture is the Statue of Liberty. It’s tiny, obviously; it can’t compete with the largest one in New York. This one is about a seventh the size of the more famous model and represents the bond with France. Moreover, it has three sisters – in Osaka, Shimoda, and Hachinohe.

You have Hulk? We have Gundam! Don’t know? Great guy, white, about 20 meters tall, usually looks like a unicorn, but he can also put on another face, the real face of Gundam the Destroyer.

Gundam is a gigantic human-piloted robot (mecha) from the Japanese anime Mobile Suit Gundam. It’s a bit of a vintage thing now; it premiered in April 1979, but Gundam’s glory hasn’t faded. It’s still a gigantic hit, and its “life-sized” model is among the main reasons for Odaiba’s popularity.

And with this robot, we didn’t even come close to finishing for today.

We were in for a bizarrenormous bizarre.

As Marek says: “A tourist trap, but I’d recommend it.”

AGREED!

We’re talking about the Robot Restaurant offering truly one of the most unusual shows you’ll ever see.

While the word “restaurant” evokes food, it’s mainly about robots. About an hour before the show started, we arrived at the venue. Other visitors with tickets for the same time as us were already there, waiting. We were all led into some sort of underground waiting area:

The whole place looked like a colourful parrot had exploded there. They offered overpriced refreshments, a clown in a robot costume played guitar on stage, repeating one song over and over to the point of insanity, and the toilets…! They set a new bar for top-notch products of design kitsch. You can forgive them the grammatical blunder on the door…

…when they’ve prepared such a throne for you!

The actual performance took place on another floor underground. They assigned us tables, and everyone was given light sticks, presumably so we could properly cheer on the robots.

It’s really hard to describe what followed. Imagine a mishmash of stories in which people in crazy costumes wrestle with robots, dance with robots, ride on robots/mechanical machines of various forms, shoot laser guns (at each other, at robots…), and color it all with a combination of traditional Japanese and modern electronic music at ear-splitting decibels, screaming, yelling and artificial robotic roaring.

The robots came in various giant forms – frogs, snakes, dragons, big pandas, even bigger pandas, and from another universe, Darth Maul and the Ninja Turtles made cameo appearances.

Due to the overblown lighting effects, the camera couldn’t keep up, and we were almost blinded. Nevertheless, we couldn’t have imagined a better cheesy spectacle. The whole grotesque lasted about 90 minutes, including three commercial breaks for the bathroom and refreshments… so much for that tourist trap.

In the end, all the robots paraded nicely on movable rails, and we, semi-blinded, semi-deafened, and culturally drained, could leave contentedly.

However, we probably had too little of an otaku culture, because right after the show, we headed to Akihabara, the shopping district where you can find all possible and impossible electronics, video games, manga, collector’s figures, cards, and toys… here a figurine of Kira from Death Note, there again Tokyo Ghoul manga in Japanese… luckily, the closing time was near.

We only managed to visit a few small street stalls and one large five-story department store mainly focused on figurines, and it was a fan service with a capital F, or with something else capital…

Five floors of figures from Japanese manga/anime and all the accompanying accessories from tiny underwear to giant killing gear. We totally understand all collectors, but we’re not among them. However captivating the figurines seemed to us, they’re ultimately just dust collectors, and we don’t want them at home.

-endy-

DONKEY’S SPECIAL:

• Apart from New York and Tokyo, you’ll find another Statue of Liberty in Paris, actually two; the more famous one stands on Swan Island in the southwestern part of Paris, and the other one is in the Luxembourg Gardens.
• The word “mecha” evokes in me the board game Scythe; sooner or later, every player says the phrase “I’ll deploy a mecha”; it’s already such a familiar catchphrase (something like when everyone says “I’m not the saboteur” during the game Saboteur and someone actually is…).
• The business model of the Robot restaurant unsurprisingly relied on commercial breaks; they came earlier than you expected, lasted longer than they should have, and offered nothing you wanted – during them, they sold Robot restaurant merch (t-shirts, keychains, bracelets, stickers…) at sky-high prices, and as Andy mentioned, there were three breaks, a nice psychological pressure; during the first break, not all visitors wanted to buy something, but someone always got up, made a purchase, sat back next to you, but already had something you didn’t; in the second break, some people went for the second round, others couldn’t resist and joined, in the third act, only the losers and outsiders remained seated, so Andy and I went to the bathroom at least to avoid attracting unwanted attention. 😀
• During the first break, we got free headphones from the organizers to spare our ears (I’ve never experienced such a barrage of decibels even at a concert).
• The word “otaku” in today’s Japanese slang means a fan obsessed with a specific topic or hobby, e.g., an anime otaku spends a lot of free time with Japanese/Korean animated series, a manga otaku reads one Japanese graphic novel after another, etc. (in South Korea, instead of manga, they use manhwa).
• Andy and I aren’t fans of things you put somewhere at home and then there’s not much to do with them; you read a book/comic, you play a board game with friends, so we understand collecting in general, but figurines are not our thing.

-mj-