Robot Restaurant: weird, but wonderful

It's hard to describe the Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku's Kabukicho district, but I'm going to give it a go. It was a combination of Starlight Express, burlesque, a local theatre production and a Daft Punk video. With more than a dash of cheesy Japanese, camp-as-hell pop culture thrown in for good measure.

And I loved it. It was, without doubt, some of the most fun I've had in Japan.

The pictures simply don't do the inexplicable series of visual explosions justice. Here they are all the same:

The waiting area, which Liberace would have loved.

Heading down two flights of stairs into the basement was like being in an arcade machine. Apparently, the whole venue cost 10 million US dollars. Money well-spent? I'll let you be the judge...

The girls playing the drums, with a couple of weird statues in the background. Followed swiftly by people in masks, carrying flaming torches:

I think this was a giant cannon: 

At one point, a giant panda, riding what I think was a horse, came galloping in from nowhere: 

And he came back, minus the horse, but with some other furry friends:

And there were girls straddling dalek-like robots:

Oh, and there was also a contraption on the ceiling that allowed the girls to circle above our heads:

  There was also a marching band:

How could I forget the girl riding a dinosaur?

 And a fight between girls riding a bigger dinosaur and some robots: 

Then there was a (victory?) parade/party: