The Creepiest Restaurant in Japan

Reading Time: 8 minutes

“truly, it was terrifying“

It was midday. I was feeling sluggish from the feverous heat and bothered by the crowd of thousands. I decided to eat lunch, preferable in the shade, for a moments peace. After shapeshifting through the mass throng — which seemed to swell at my every step — my usual lack of patience for inconsideration began to hypocritically feed a lack of consideration for others.

After avoiding being ground down into fine dust, I was stopped by what seemed to be a young girl dressed as a maid. Not an erotic one, instead, a fairytale-type maid, one thrilly and whose makeup created a false sense of bashfulness.

She created a bubble around us with her complete blissfulness to the surrounding we both endured. She began calming me with a wafting from her uchiwa, like a fairy blowing a date-rape drug in my face before urging me to follow her with “Up… food. No people.”

Maybe that should have been my first concern. This is a true story about the creepiest restaurant in Japan.

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Unsure of her offer, I turned my head in an attempt to find an alternative. Anything had to be better than continuing in the strong current of tourism, so I looked back at her and into her strange and unnatural colourful eyes, vacillating, and said, “…sure“, like a charmed, defeated sailor following a mermaid.

She changed her demeanour into a placid and overtly eager… slave. She then took me by the limp and unwilling wrist. She skipped us both towards a shadowy gap between two towering buildings where I lowered my head from the overhead cables, “okay” she said, pressing a sticker-covered panel to what I gathered was the button to an elevator. The elevator was small and played no part in instigating conversation between us. Instead, we stood in silence with the girl pushing down her decadent and puffy dress to offer space, and me, resting my side against the elevator, utterly unknowing as to what was about to happen.

With a ding, the elevator doors opened, and the girl instantaneously resumed character as if she had just reconnected to the Wi-Fi. She welcomed me warmly with her great huge colourful eyes and directed me out and into her establishment. Like a cat, I took a step, nervously, whilst the rest of my body remained inside; of course, I wasn’t utterly clueless. I knew it would be a themed establishment, nonetheless one in which I could eat. Though this place was identical to a dark T.V panel show, and by dark, I don’t mean ‘lighting’, it was as if I stepped through the looking glass.

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“I sat at a table with only one thing on my mind, ‘leave, quick’“

There were four rows of curved desks, each one behind a little higher than the one before. At these desks were four men, one at each level like a visual hierarchy of peculiarity. Each one was middle-aged and stranger than the next, all of whom sat hiding behind a fringe that fell over their faces. Situated at the front was a stage washed in pink paint and lit up with soft glowing pink fairy lights dangling from pins and tack on the wall behind. There was an assembly of maids on the stage, all of which welcomed me with loud screeching like the ones of sirens.

Feeling under pressure from such a greeting, my immediate reaction of “get out of here” was hugely overshadowed. I foolishly and regrettably followed the maid deeper into the web, though, instead headed for a table in the back corner to retreat from partaking in any performance that I had convinced myself they’d force me to participate in.

I sat at a table with only one thing on my mind, “leave, quick“. But before I could entertain the thought, a burst of maids rushed into my space and crouched all around me. They were insistent I stayed; it was as if they had been watching me as if they had been reading my very thoughts, or at least, my resistant body language. One maid, who stood small at the back, stared through the group and directly at me. She was holding an unlit candle, waiting for the others to disperse before kneeling down beside my table and offering it to me.

“This is our magic, please… you say the magic spell with me.“

“No, no, it’s not necessary, honestly… just came to eat.”

I insisted it wasn’t necessary to cast any such spells, but it didn’t work. Instead, she became annoyed, which drew the attention of the four men sat across from me who began staring through their fringes that they parted with their fingers. It was as if they were watching me but without thought, with a completely lifeless expression, “as if they’d been drugged“, I thought, genuinely convincing myself that this indeed was a mermaids lair. I, too, had been innocently sung to shipwreck.

I succumbed to shift the attention away from me. I murmured along with the words to her scripted spell with great embarrassment and confusion. She took the candle in one hand and blew on it, and as she did, she flicked a switch with the other, and an LED flame appeared. This very moment in time and space was one that she cherished and solemnly did believe was sincere magic, or at least wanted me to feel it was. This seemed palpably through her seriousness and an unwavering stare that saw no blink. The candle offered no light to a dark atmosphere, one that shared the space with a soft, erotic pink glow that trailed around the room.

I ordered a plate of what was labelled ‘meat’. I sat waiting whilst trying to avoid the gaze of the pecking order of peculiarity. As I did, another unsuspecting poor soul had been lured in. We looked at one another with a sense of understanding and shame; unfortunately for him, he was about to feel a little more embarrassed as he too cast the magical spell.

Suddenly, the lights dimmed further, casting the room into darkness and a sense of vulnerability. I sat up and shuffled so that the back of my chair touched the wall to offer myself security. The now new member of the coven looked my way as if my few minutes of experience gave me a clue as to what was happening; though I did not, I shrugged his way and as did he.

I looked ahead at the group of men. I saw them react in a child-like way, sitting upright and becoming giddy and shy. They projected this with a bashful kawaii expression of crossed hands in front of the mouth as if they were about to giggle something serious.

The maids came on stage and began performing a series of odd postures, all without music and all in dim light… just silence. It was as if they were figurines being manipulated by a giant child twisting his action figures in every direction that went against the springs. Truly, it was terrifying.

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“leaving it in there long enough until she was satisfied I’d be fully intoxicated“

During what I can only assume was a… display, the absolute muteness was disturbed by the arrival of my meat, which of course, I was highly suspicious of. The same maid as before crouched beside me like a doctor offering a lollipop to a child and told me, “try” I replied, “thank you, it’s fine, thank you“, hoping she’d leave so that I could somehow discard of what I thought was, for sure, drugged-stuffed meat. I picked up a spoonful and stuck it in my mouth, leaving it in there long enough until she was satisfied I’d be fully intoxicated, or so I thought.

She left, and I swallowed it. I had no choice. The maids who gathered in the kitchen watched me through the small service counter that sat in the wall just in front of me. It seemed to please them. Though just before I did, I took a photo of what I had eaten and sent it to my friend just in case my body turned up dumped in an alleyway deep in the heart of Tokyo, chewed on and half-eaten, or whatever it is, Sirens do.

A shriek of “No!” followed the kitchen door swinging back off its hinges and into the other customer. I was terrified. The maids ran out and crouched all around me, screeching, “no picture, no picture!” I knew it, it was dosed, and I too was about to become a trophy on the panel of peculiarity, “but where would I sit?” I began questioning as if it were a turn of fate I had so quickly accepted. “Will I need to fight the king?” I knew it; these thoughts were those of a lunatic. What had I eaten, and what was it doing to me?

In the uproar, it was as if I drew the eye of Sauron as the panel of men turned simultaneously, seemingly offended that I had disturbed whatever it was that was happening on stage. The maids who ran at me joined those on stage and continued the enchanting moves to recast what had to be a spell. As they did, the man from the bottom row, the ‘lesser oddity’, got up and began making his way over to me.

As he approached, I lowered my head. I had no intention, no business in challenging anyone for a spot at the table of kings. I kept my head down and looked under my brow and across to my only ally at the other table. “Fu*k,” I said to myself, seeing that he too had fallen to the lure with his almost daydreaming type expression, “Medusa“, I supposed mockingly. This was all too much.

He passed me, running his fingers across my table and over the brim of my plate, seemingly claiming territory and headed straight to the one and only bathroom. I waited for the door to close behind him so that I could recollect my thoughts without distraction, but the door never closed; well, I never heard it close anyway. I sat pretending to eat what was still unidentifiable. The shape of the meal wasn’t going to fool me, “a bear“, I smirked, unimpressed by their attempt to conceal the malice of their intentions.

(yes, I actually got a photo before they stopped me)

The ‘lesser’ returned from the bathroom as if a sense of relief was slowly fazing over him. After a few seconds of him returning to his seat, the second man, the one above, proceeded to go to the bathroom, though this time without any touching of my table nor plate, fortunately.

Like the first, he went away for a few moments, returned satisfied and sat. The third then took to the same system, “what’re they… doing?” I questioned. I was confused by what seemed to be order, almost like a rehearsed agreement of bladder movement. This became more intriguing than the performance on stage, which was still taking place.

“If the ‘greater oddity’ goes“, I had begun thinking, “seriously, what’re they doing?”

And as if they had been listening, the fourth then took his turn and went to the bathroom, but this time… I watched.

As if he was bending backwards, his head perched around the door as his body lingered within the toilet, it was like seeing a hand puppet poking around a doorframe. His eyes locked the stage with a wide stare, and his face shook vigorously for a minute. Gradually, and ever so slowly, he closed his eyes, and as he did, his head retreated and rejoined his body.

I observed this man with a look of shock and doubt, not believing what I saw, “fu*k off“, I thought, “no, there’s no way…” But he was, and he really did. I looked around for cameras, “clearly, this is a TV show; it has to be” I believed I always heard about strange Japanese TV shows. I wanted it to be one, more than anything I did. Still, as much as I wanted someone to run out with a camera, I knew they wouldn’t. I knew what this was… I knew.

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