I'm a few days behind here, and not doing a very good job of writing updates...

Ryan, Akiko, Andrew and I participated in a "genuine" japanese culinary tradition - the theme restaurant.

On the top of the list in the visitors guide to restaurants in tokyo, is Ninja. others include the Lockup (hungry patrons are chained up in jail cells while they eat prison style food) and a few others that escape me at the moment.
Ninja was supposed to be a thrilling experience - ninjas jump out from hidden doorways and do flips and whatnot. they will hurdle throwing stars at you and kick you and whatnot.
in reality though, it is simply a cavern style restaurant (picture a haunted house). they did try to jump out from nowhere after being summoned by the hostess in the front (she clapped several times, aparently this is ninja code.)

following our trek through the haunted house maze, and our thrilling crossing of the ninja bridge (a drawbridge that teh ninja summoned), we were shown our room. the food here was supposed to be isekaya style, a rather large menu of cheap items, but it was quite the opposite. i would estimate the average person would pay almost 10,000 yen for a satisfying meal. waaaaaaaaaaay more than we thought.

we bought a single 10 course meal and split it between the four of us.,.. turned out to be very hilarious as we resorted to dividing very small things into very small portions (the frozen half of a grape for dessert was delicious!).