High-end dining just got a lot higher.

Just when you think going out to eat is losing its magic, these 10 oddly themed restaurants push the envelope and really get you your money’s worth. For some of them, food is secondary to the ambiance, or not even part of the picture. For others, the tastes of the menu items are piqued by the complementary atmosphere. Whatever you’re into – cats, ninjas, or handcuffs – a few of these restaurants are sure to make it to your bucket list.

Yellow Treehouse Café, New Zealand

The Yellow Treehouse offers a unique setting that channels the excitement of your tree-climbing days. Patrons of the restaurant dine in an illuminated pod-shaped structure perched 10-meters high in a Redwood tree. The pod can hold 30 guests at one time. As for the food, it stays grounded – all dishes are fresh, seasonal, and adapt to clients’ needs.

Cabbages & Condoms, Bangkok

As its namesake suggests, the food at Cabbages & Condoms is “guaranteed not to cause pregnancy.” The restaurant was created to support the Population and Community Development Association, an organization that provides sex/AIDS education and awareness. The garden restaurant is an introduction to Thai food – in only the safest way possible – and instead of mint favors on your way out, you’re given a box of condoms.

Calico Cat Café, Tokyo

Imagine going to a café that only serves cat food, but there’s a chance that it’s too crowded to get a seat. The Calico Cat Café in Tokyo is just that popular. The café caters to your love for coddling and feeding cats sans the commitment. Patrons are asked to sanitize their hands and remove their shoes upon entering and to abide by set rules: do not hold or stroke a cat if it resists you, do not wake a napping cat, do not hold cats with scarves around their necks (they are too young), and do not bring cat nip or cat food to the café. For $9 per adorable hour, the café is a bargain. Only, you’ll leave hungry.

Ithaa Undersea Restaurant, Maldives

The magical Ithaa Undersea Restaurant is the first of its kind in the world. The restaurant is located 5 meters (16 feet) under water off the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island and serves contemporary Asian-inspired European cuisine. The restaurant is encased in R-Cast acrylic and can host 14 people at one time, offering a 270° panoramic underwater view.

Unsicht-Bar, Cologne and Berlin

Heighten your other senses by taking away one very important one: sight. The Unsicht-Bar, with locations in Cologne and Berlin in Germany, uses the dark to strip patrons of their vision and take them on a culinary adventure that requires they focus more on taste, temperature, texture and smell. All light is forbidden, including that coming from watches and cellphones. The restaurant’s waiters are also either blind or visually impaired. The food, which is described enigmatically to leave an element of surprise, is served in a context-appropriate manner, avoiding a confusion of flavors or a potential mess. The flavors are simple, but profound in that they are enjoyed in an entirely new way – without visual prejudgment.

Ninja New York, New York City

Japanese cuisine just got more interesting. At Ninja New York, diners are wowed, and often at the edge of their seats, with ninjas jumping around, pop rocks on sushi rolls, smoke machine action, magicians, and an overall festive and upbeat atmosphere. The restaurant’s décor aspires to mimic a ninja village from the feudal days, providing patrons with a sense of what it was like back when.

Chill Out, Dubai

As if Dubai has not enough marvels as is, the city offers a unique way to, well, chill out. Chill Out is an architecturally fascinating refrigerator lounge with special lighting and design works that highlight the innovativeness of the frozen structures. Before entering the bar, Patrons are offered thermal clothing – parka, shoes, and gloves – and are then led to the Eskimo oasis. A complimentary mocktail or hot chocolate welcomes you.

Devil Island Prison Restaurant, China

This restaurant was initially conceptualized to scare people from a life of crime. Upon entering this restaurant, patrons are allocated a number, photographed, fingerprinted, and optionally handcuffed. The interior of the restaurant is designed after a prison, with sliding jail doors, metal floors, and rusty iron bars. Patrons dine in a prison cell and are served by waiters dressed in black-and-white striped inmate uniforms. Food includes fried, coffin-shaped bread.

Dinner In The Sky, Worldwide

Suspended 50-meters high by a crane, diners at Dinner in the Sky can host an event practically anywhere. The table is equipped with 22 seats, one chef, one waiter, and one entertainer. Dinner in the Sky operates in more than 15 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, and South Africa. The event can be hosted for up to 8 hours, with the time fragmented – people can come and go at whatever interval of time. As for a bathroom break, have no fear, the crane will lower for relief without interrupting the experience for more than a few minutes.

Marton Theme Restaurant, Taiwan

Originally serving chocolate ice cream in toilet-shaped containers, Marton Theme Restaurant has certainly gained quite the fanfare over the years. There are now Marton restaurants across Taiwan and the company has recently changed the name of its restaurants to “Modern Toilet Restaurant,” all of which offer a full menu that can be enjoyed whilst sitting atop a toilet.

Images: Jeremiah Ro, Meredith P., Carsten Lorenzten, Karendotcom127, Wonder Bus Tours Dubai, Smart Travelers

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Narrow houses once filled the gap between urban overpopulation and practicality. They’re still practical, but also sleek, sexy, and very in.  

In a sobering departure from McMansions built on mini-kingdom parcels of land, the narrow house is enjoying a renaissance in both urban strongholds like London and Tokyo, as well as width-hoarding suburbia.

There’s even been a book written about the svelte architecture movement. Avi Friedman, author of Narrow Houses: New Directions in Efficient Design, explains that while narrow homes have been part of the urban landscape for centuries – for reasons including a tax breadth for wider properties and dearth of space in walled medieval cities – they’re once again being sought after for their environmental advantages, including greater land-use efficiency, less building material, lower utility bills, fewer infrastructure costs and an overall smaller footprint.

“Since the beginning of the housing boom of the 1950s, the size of the average North American house has steadily grown, while the size of the average family has decreased,” Friedman explains. “Today, a growing number of home buyers seeking smaller, more efficient residential designs are rediscovering a centuries-old housing prototype.”

Measuring a petite 25 feet wide or less, Friedman profiles 28 “infill” or “skinny” houses in cities and suburbs around the world. Meanwhile, here are eight innovative skinny minis that we found. After this, you’re going to want to put your house on a diet.

The Silver House in London measures in at 10 feet wide and 26 feet high. It was once a wine vault, which served the pub next door.

This jack-in-the-box in Antwerp, Belgium is 7’ 10” wide. It was created by architects Pieter Peerlings and Silvia Martens of Sculp(It) as a multi-functional work/play space, with mutually exclusive spaces for working, eating, living and sleeping.

The exterior of this Tokyo home bears a striking resemblance to a flat-screen television. In order to utilize the itty-bitty lot without squashing the house against the street, the façade has been tilted 63 degrees as a welcome change of perspective, while remaining typically Japanese in its minimalism.

This almost-anorexic apartment by architect Jakub Szczęsny is too-thin-to-be-true, for now. It’s still in the concept stage, a cold-cut sandwiched between a hulking tower and an old tenement building in Warsaw, Poland. It will be 60 inches wide when completed. That’s just a taste of what promises to be a very rich and stimulating project. Visit Home-Designing for the full scoop.

I’m 99% certain that I saw this home during a canal tour of Amsterdam, though I was in Amsterdam. You can never be too sure. It is the narrowest in the city, maintaining a rather strong, albeit willowy, presence among more stocky neighbors.

In this neighborhood, the “half” in its address (75 ½ Bedford Street) makes a minimal impact on the price of this house. Given the lineage, too, this lithe Greenwich Village gem is almost priceless. It was a carriage entranceway until it became a cobbler shop, candy factory, and eventual home to actor John Barrymore and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The Sliding House is a truly stunning and daring slice of reedy architecture. You must see it to believe it. The house – built in the far eastern reaches of Suffolk County, England – has movable components that insulate it during the cold winter months, and slide open to drench the residents in the warmth of the region’s oh-so-fleeting summer sunshine.

The Holly Barn in Norfolk, England has a narrow base, but was built as a voluminous, fully accessible two-level space. The husband in the family suffers from chronic arthritis, hence the rooms and hallways are wide enough to accommodate the turning circumference of a wheelchair with subtle curves throughout. In all, it gives the illusion of width, but is less than 25-feet wide.

Images: Home-Designing; Boyarsky Murphy Architects; Luc Roymans; Home-Designing; craigatk; Karlinksi73; DeZeen; Architecture.com

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Whether it’s the Maid Cafes in the nerds’ electronic hive of Akihabara, the Hysteric Glamour fashions around Harajuku, the leather jacketed Shibuya Gals, or the more couture looks coming from the likes of Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto,  Japanese fashion is pretty intense and diverse.

By adopting a mixture of current and traditional trends, Japanese trendsetters are unabashedly ready to explore their personal fashion identities no matter what you might think of them.

While more couture looks boldly highlight a higher end identity, street style renegades mixing homemade with anime punk are at the front and center of a fast fashion trend moving as fast as any other part of the world.

Kate Black, founder of  eco-blog Magnifeco says the climate for disposable fashion there doesn’t differ from other developed nations in that “fast fashion” is just part of the fashion psyche. Black says long before H&M and Forever 21, the Japanese frugal-fashionistas had Uniqlo, ABC Shoe Mart and 109 which are filled to the brim with low-priced items.

“There is an annual fashion show called the Tokyo Girls Collection – which dictates fast fashion trends to women in their early 20s. It’s a huge sold-out event where 20,000+ girls attend a full stadium event, with runway shows from some of the top “fad” designers and brands and then what appears as a mainstream trend on the street stems from that,” says Black.

Cosplay Girls at Harajuku

Shantel Girtley, Sales Account Executive of L.A based Style Assembly, a showroom housing many sustainable designers gets to see forward dressing Japanese buyers at Market a couple times a year. She says there are usually two types of savvy Japanese buyers that emerge at markets to buy for their customers.

“Those that are American press driven and those that want ‘under the radar’ lines. They’re usually swarming the designers who are unusual in some way. You will also find them shopping for lines that are domestically made here in the U.S. at  Market locations in Vegas and New York,” says Girtley, who is particularly enamored with the looks coming out of Tokyo.

“I may be biased when it comes to Japanese fashion, specifically originating from Tokyo. I personally love the way they use clothing and accessories to transform on a day to day basis. I believe they are pushing the envelope in every way to carve out a path for most to follow. The fashion coming out of Tokyo is fearless, yet incredibly graceful. This ironically would be my personal definition of ‘fashion’. Whether its straight off the runway or straight out of the streets, Tokyo fashion infuses both to create a buzz that we just can’t stop talking about,” says Girtley.

From Tokyofashion.com

Tracey Forrest, founder of the True Collaborative Showroom out of Portland, Oregon – another sustainable designer’s showroom – says Japanese buyers are very professional buyers who know their budgets, know what their demanding customers will want, and make quick and calculated decisions.

“They plan a smart mix of heritage brands with strong brand equity and also place a few new innovative brands to keep the mix interesting and innovative for their customers,” says Forrest.

Not sure what you think about Japanese fashion or its interesting history? Currently two Japanese fashion exhibits are running that you can take in: One is “Japan Fashion Now” at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT) in New York City, and the second is “Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion” at the Barbican Art Gallery in London.

According to Sarah Scaturro, of the print journal Fashion Projects, “both focus on Japanese fashion designers and celebrate their contributions to the Western fashion system,” and both shows offer looks dating back to 30 years ago and pay attention to contemporary Japanese sub-cultures.

Image: The Sydney Morning Herald

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