The Weirdest Restaurant I've Ever Ever Been To

On Friday my classmate T.J. invited me and 10 others from ICU out into Shinjuku for his 21st birthday.  Being an American, his 21st was a big deal, and he wanted to celebrate it in style.  That's certainly how the night turned out!

After meeting at the nearby Musashi-Sakai station, we all got the train twenty minutes to Shinjuku (incidentally the busiest train station in the world, with over 200, yes 200 exits).  From there we walked to Kabukicho, the red-light district.  Even to just walk around Kabukicho is an experience in itself.

The standard "Oo, Tokyo" picture

In Kabukicho was The Lockup restaurant.  It's a haunted prison-themed restaurant and I have to say that it was mind-bogglingly strange, terrifying and, well, Japanese.  To get into the restaurant itself you have to walk through a dark, narrow tunnel, where a variety of gruesome things jump out at you, like at a haunted house or London Dungeons (yes, in a restaurant).

Once inside the restaurant, a waitress dressed in a very skimpy and kinky police uniform led T.J. in handcuffs to our 'cell' for the evening.  

We weren't allowed to photograph the waitresses, so this is the best I got...

Once inside, we each opted for the two-hour all-you-can-drink (yes, 飲み放題 again) & all-you-can-eat option, which was just 3,000 yen (£25) per person.  Pretty cheap considering this is in the centre of Tokyo, the most expensive city in the world, and we all left pretty ahem satiated at the end of our two hours! 

The cocktails arrived in various pieces of laboritory equipment, test tubes, beakers, syringes, etc, and were all brightly coloured (and delicious).

Throughout the evening, endless plates of food kept arriving, and it was certainly tastier than I had heard prison food to be!  There was both Japanese and Western food, including prawn dishes, fried pork, and some very salty chips (fries to the American readers).

T.J. is the one looking chuffed with his birthday night out, second from right.

At a random moment halfway through eating, everything went dark, before a prison siren went off, accompanied by loud, heavy music and strobe lights, as the 'jailbreak' occured.  Several monster-prisoners burst into our cell, slamming open the heavy doors and reaching out towards us.  Props to Erin Flannery for getting this video;

 

It was a pretty amazing experience, all in all!  I'm certainly going to have to do something spectacular to top it for my birthday in November! 

James