Wacky Theme Restaurants Still Exploding in Tokyo

TOKYO - The wacky theme restaurant trend in Tokyo is continuing to explode with no end in sight.

Japanese designer La Carmina, author of Crazy, Wacky Theme Restaurants: Tokyo! (Mark Batty Publisher), visits Tokyo several times a year to scope out the city's most bizarre eateries.

She recently took Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern to a jail-themed restaurant where they were handcuffed and taken to a cell.

On the way, monsters attacked them and they drank red slushies out of a mannequin's head.  Carmina says strange restaurants are popping up more than ever around Tokyo because tourists have taken a keen interest in them.

And they certainly have plenty to choose from.

She says men love "maid cafes"- where women in skimpy maid outfits clean their ears- and women love "cat cafes," where they can eat while petting kitties.

There is also a "baby cafe," specifically for baby playdates, and a new Transformers-themed diner that just opened in the "nerdy district."