no full like sushi full

On Friday, my daughter was busy with her youth group, leaving us all on our own, to do whatever we wanted and go wherever we wanted (so long as we were back in about 3 hours). That left only one option – sushi. We LOVE sushi; our daughter does not. We like to go to kai-ten sushi places. The sushi comes around on a little conveyor belt and patrons sitting around the bar can select whatever plates they want, usually with two pieces on it. When finished, the hostess comes and counts the plates to total it up. The sushi chefs sit in the middle and make the sushi fresh; if there is something you want but don’t see, just call it out and they’ll make it. We went to a family style kai-ten sushi place we had passed many times and wanted to try. They had a parking lot (a HUGE bonus), so we drove. Our first obstacle was the waiting list. When I write in Japanese, it’s like I am holding a crayon in my fist. Kindergardeners write better than I do. My husband is not much better. Still, he wrote down our name. The Japanese have 3 main forms of writing; our name is written using the phonetic alaphabet for foreign words. We were the only gaijin in the place. The hostess would call out names as places opened up, but it sounded rather like, “o-ka-wa o-na-wa ee-ma-as!” every time. We were afraid we wouldn’t recognize our name, so we kept edging closer and closer. We didn’t have to worry. Sure enough when she got to our name she looked right at us – it couldn’t be anyone else! We went to a table, one side taken by the conveyor belt. If you want soup or beer or some fish or other you didn’t see on the conveyor belt, this restaurant had a speaker to alert the chefs. Your request would make its way around on the belt with a marker to indicate that it belongs to a particular table. Our big faux pax was to accidentally take someone else’s order because we couldn’t read the sign. Still, as it was a plate counting affair, they didn’t have to pay for it. The sushi was tasty. One came around with grilled nas (eggplant) on a pillow of rice. I got a plate of those. My husband popped it into his mouth and began choking, gagging and turning red. I thought he was just fooling around. I ate mine and began choking, gagging and turning red. We were drinking water and giggling and sweating. I am sure we put on quite the show. Holy cow – that was SPICY. From now on when something is not what it appears to be and suprises us – we will call it being “nassed.” For dessert we had chocolate mousse, but there were no spoons. So, we ate it with our chopsticks. It’s not as hard as it sounds because it was rather firm. We left feeling full and happy for around $14 USD. There is no full like sushi full 🙂

Hope you have a great day!!