What?! A robot restaurant [ ロボットレストラン ] ! More of a show and less of a restaurant, of course. Brace yourself for an hour and a half of bright and loud, slightly tacky but highly entertaining extravaganza! There are robots and girls in skimpy costumes dancing, drumming, and performing under multi-colored laser beams. Everyone's super genki and you'll feel energized too! ( unless you hate loud music and bright lights / the objectification of women or are prone to migraines or photosensitive epileptic seizures... in that case, this is clearly not for you! ) Otherwise, you will be giggling nonstop from the heart because it's just... pure surreal awesomeness!!
So, when you arrive, you go across the street to buy your 5000-yen ticket from the machine. This is when you can choose your dinner bento box of either meat (A - orange button) or fish (B - blue button).; The cold rice box is not anything to write home about, but it's nicely presented and moderately tasty.
They suggest that you arrive early to go to the 3rd floor waiting area where assorted cocktails, beer, and soft drinks are between 300 - 500 yen each, served by cute young girls wearing miniskirts and cat ears driving drink carts around ever so slowly. Beware of robot surprises!
When it comes time for the show, you go down to B2 and pick up your dinner box then take a seat. At first, you might think, "is the whole show like this?" It is not. Some parts might literally blow your mind. You can take photos during the show and there are photo ops with awesome robots. If you're going, I'd recommend not looking at the pictures or videos for the full shock value.
Take the east exit [ 東口 ] of JR Shinjuku Station [ 新宿駅 ]. It's a couple of minutes to walk to Kabukicho [ 歌舞伎町 ] and down the road across from the Sunkus convenience store [ サンクス ] . You can make a phone reservation for the 7 pm / 8:30 pm / 10 pm show or just show up to buy a ticket - they speak English on the phone and have announcements in English during the show. You can find more info on the Robot Restaurant : English website.
UPDATE November 27th, 2016 : Now that this has become a very well-known and popular attraction, it's just not the same. True, the show has more explosions and even more robots, but they added a lot more breaks in between for people to spend more buying drinks. Other than the dancers, the staff looked extremely unhappy, unlike other places in Japan where at least they pretend to be courteous... they were just eager to herd droves of people in and out so the photo op we got at the end of the show is no longer done. The price has also gone up a lot, but you can get a 2000 yen off coupon from Metropolis Magazine, a magazine you can pick up for free at Kinokuniya bookstore's Foreign Books floor 紀伊國屋書店, amongst other places.
