- Title: JAPAN: Cabaret club goes high-tech in Japan.
- Date: 27th August 2012
- Summary: TOKYO, JAPAN (RECENT - AUGUST 16, 2012) (REUTERS) (NIGHT SCENES) TWO ROBOTS ON TRAILER BEING DRIVEN ALONG ROAD VARIOUS EXTERIORS OF ROBOT RESTAURANT GIRL PILOTING GIANT ROBOT ROBOT'S ARMS MOVING ROBOT'S FACIAL FEATURES MOVING CUSTOMERS SITTING IN STAGE AREA TWO BIKINI-CLAD DANCERS SITTING ON GIANT ROBOT GIANT ROBOTS MOVING AND DANCERS APPEARING DANCER ON SMALL ROBOT VAR
- Embargoed: 11th September 2012 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Japan
- Country: Japan
- Topics: Quirky,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVA753N8FLX316D2ERKPJLVZHG78
- Story Text: Bikini-clad dancers and giant robots bring new twist to Tokyo cabaret club.
In the bowels of one of Tokyo's best-known red-light districts lies a restaurant where bikini-clad girls pilot giant robots, hang onto moving miniature airplanes and ride mock-up tanks all in the name of entertainment.
"Robot Restaurant" opened in July after three years of construction and 10 billion yen (125.8 million U.S. dollars), the owners said.
The hour-long show features a smorgasbord of sensory-assailing lights and music where dancers appear in a variety of skimpy costumes to dance, drum and pilot machines which sometimes pass just centimetres in front of the audience.
"The robot here was piloted by the dancers and it came really close. It was dangerous," laughed 27-year-old Yuka Aoshika, thrilled at the close encounter.
The centrepiece of the show are two 3.6 metre high (11.97 feet) custom-made female robots operated by bikini-clad women.
The restaurant brings a new high-tech, high-octane twist to Tokyo's red-light district where waning customer numbers due to Japan's shrinking and ageing population, a moribund economy and an increase in 'herbivore males', referring to men who are passive and less interested in sex, are forcing entertainment establishments to get creative.
The popularity of the show has spread by word-of-mouth and through the internet. The show is normally fully booked.
Customers pay 4000 yen (50 U.S dollars) for the show that runs three times a day.
The establishment said half the restaurant's customers are women who come to experience the close encounters.
"The machines came right up to here. If we extended our feet we would have been hit," said Aoshika.
"If you don't sit properly, I think you will be hit," said visitor Yu Aoshima after watching the show.
The show and glitzy club hark back to the days of Japan's bubble economy, the boom of the mid- to late-1980s that saw flashy clubs sprout up across Tokyo to cater to the newly-rich. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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