Sushi

One thing we have always loved about rural Japan, is the many cheap options for families to eat at. There are of course many options in the big cities, but in medium to large sized country towns, there seem to be plenty of family restaurants.

We love sushi. Luckily, the two places that I have lived in have had awesome sushi restaurants. The best place I have ever been to (cost, quality, service, atmosphere) was called Uogashi and was located in Nagaizumi or Mishima (used to be on the border), in Shizuoka prefecture. Since it was close to the fishing port, the fish were fresh and delicious. They also had a tuna-cutting "show" most Saturday afternoons.

Our current local "kaiten zushi" (conveyor-belt sushi restaurant) is called Kappa Sushi and I think this is a chain restaurant around the country. It is also a great place to visit. The plates are cheap, the sizes are enough, there is a wide variety, and the freshness is also spot on. They sometimes have specials where one plate of salmon or maguro (tuna) is 88 yen, but the standard cost is around 108 yen (on March 25, 2015). (*Note: If you order "tuna", pronounced "tsuna" over here, it refers to the canned type)

In Australia, we visited a few different sushi restaurants, but were hesitant to really enjoy the experience properly because of the extravagant prices. I guess we felt this way because we were not used to paying that much in Japan. The quality was still pretty good, though the range was not that marvellous. There were also quite a few choices that would definitely not make it on the conveyor belt in Japan - crumbed chicken, beef, tonkatsu. I completely understand that these restaurants are suiting the customers' tastes in order to increase sales, but it harms their impressions of authentic sushi. Before you assume I am Aussie-bashing, Japan is extremely guilty of doing the same thing here for a very wide variety of things, e.g. mayonnaise and nori (seaweed) on pizza. I am quite certain I will devote a blog post or three thousand about the "Japanification" of many things.

I made a little video about a trip to our local Kappa Sushi and tried to explain a few of the things you would see there. The most common "mistakes", for lack of a better word, people make when eating sushi relate to the しょうゆ shouyu (soy sauce) and しょうが shouga (pickled ginger). Firstly, try not to drown your nigiri-zushi in the soy sauce for too long. It increases the saltiness and detracts from the flavour of the main item (e.g. fish). Secondly, the ginger is not something you put on the sushi. It is a side dish that you eat in between different types of sushi to clean the palate. I know it is delicious and you just want to eat heaps, but use some self-discipline and try what I just said at least once. You might notice a difference.

Enjoy.