Tokyo - day 3
It’s been 3 steady days of chaos so far. Yesterday, David and I had our meeting with Sega …which lasted 3 hours. One thing about Japanese meetings, apparently you never wear your shoes. Thank God I got a pedicure. Also, thank God they replenish your green tea midway, because you get the slow sense of exhaustion from jet lag even faster when you’re watching a 3 hour presentation on 3d graphics.
After another meeting, we ran late to a dinner date with Hiroko, David’s good Japanese friend and fashion writer native to here and her Finnish husband. They took us to dinner, and what a dinner it was.
The place was called “Alcatraz ER” … and yes, it was a medical prison themed restaurant. Weaving through the streets of Shibuya, Hiroko even had to use her cell phone GPS to locate the place. You know Tokyo is confusing when even the locals need maps. I especially find it difficult, since there are no street names, but rather the blocks are numbered.
We find the place, near an especially quaint part of the city, located deep in a cluster of “love motels” on the 5th floor of a building.
The entrance is dark, and to enter, you have to press one of five buttons indicating your blood type. When the doors open, you are in a prison ward, with cute servers dressed like nurses and men as doctors. After handcuffing David, and pretend injecting me with a giant syringe, we get guided to our table, which is actually a jail cell. Menus are given, and in order to summon the server, we need to make noise by hitting the pipe against the jail bars. Ahh the joys of themed eating in Japan.
Alcatraz ER Medical Restaurant from Leyla Tirgari on Vimeo.
