Kaiten-zushi, (回転寿司) or conveyer belt sushi restaurants are a great way for a tourist or new teacher in Japan to sample a variety of cheap and cheerful Japanese culinary delights. As an alternative to the full-blown and slightly forbidding restaurants, they are a fun and pain free gateway to a wider world of taste-bud titillating treats.
Having to read a confusing hand written kanji menu can put even a seasoned eikaiwa (English conversation school) teacher off of ducking under those distinctive half-curtains. It takes a lot longer than most foreigners spend in Japan to be able to decipher the kanji represented by the beautifully cursive swirls, let alone to know what part of what animal each kanji describes. It’s far easier to press the button on the semi-automatic doors of the neighbourhood Kappa-zushi. A kappa is a mythical creature than lives in the waters of Japanese legend, so the name translates as “water spirit sushi”. It’s a famous and ubiquitous brand of kaiten-zushi in Japan and although it’s often relegated to the “cheap and nasty” end of the sushi food-chain by clued-up natives, there’s no reason a foreigner wouldn’t enjoy its simple family fare.
Of course one man’s “simple family fare” is another man’s “worrying undercooked alien-esque deep-sea beastie”. In years of eating a variety of sushi restaurants, this reviewer has never been given food-poisoning or anything like it. Japanese standards of hygiene and preparation, even at these relatively low-end chains beats most other countries with a thoroughly sterilised marigold.
First thing to do is hold up the number of fingers representing the number of people in your party. This may seem incredibly rude at home, but in Japan it is common to barely address or register the existence of service industry workers. This leaves you free to avoid excessive human interaction if you feel your Japanese is now up to snuff yet. After being seated, grab yourself some cups off of the shelf above the sushi belt.
There will usually be a pot of powdered green tea (or tea bags) on the table near the conveyer and a small scoop with which you spoon the tea into your mug. Carefully press the mug into the round black pad above the small drain and scolding hot water will pour into your mug from above giving you a refreshing drink to compliment the fishy morsels that are gliding temptingly past in your peripheral vision.
You can order fresh sushi for your table, but for now it might help to see what you’re eating so close your eyes and grab a plate. Having plucked a quivering deep-sea creature off a moving belt, without dunking your elbow in hot tea or dropping anything for the first time, you’ll probably be overcome with the feeling you’ve just won a fair ground game. Ride out the wave of adrenaline before you try and wield those chopsticks. You might need steady hands for the next bit.
Assuming you didn’t pick up 穴子 (“anago” – conger eel) or うなぎ (“unagi” – eel) which are usually eaten with a sweeter tare sauce, you should now be reaching for a splash of soy sauce and some slices of soft, wet, yellow ginger. After having emptied a plate, one should fill this with soy and ginger and use this as a sauce receptacle for the rest of the meal.
For a start you might like to try the following:
烏賊(いか) – ika squid
雲丹(ウニ) – uni sea urchin
鯛(たい) – tai bream
たこ焼き – takoyaki dough balls with with chunks of octopus in them
マグロ – maguro tuna
鰻(うなぎ) – unagi eel
蝦アボカド(エビアボカド) – ebi avocado shrimp, avocado and mayonaise
カンパチ – kanpachi amberjack
虹鱒(ニジマス) – nijimasu rainbow trout
鯵(あじ) – aji horse mackerel
Hold your chopsticks parallel to the table and grip the sashimi gently but firmly along the bed of rice. Attacking the rice too directly will cause it to lose its structural integrity to disastrous effect. This is bush league, Audrey, and could cause you to be mocked mercilessly at best and ejected from the premises at worst. If you got he pressure just right and the block stays in one piece, tip the sashimi at a slight angle, dip the rice briefly in the soy sauce and pop it in your mouth whole. If you didn’t notice the word “briefly” in the previous sentence, take a long hard look at it now. Attempting to bite through most kinds of sashimi is a rookie lesson in pain and will see you wiping soy sauce off of yourself and nearby strangers. Be a man and get it all in there in one go.
Common practice from this point on is to hold a hand in front of your mouth while you negotiate the mouthful and moan うまいいい (“umaiiii”) which means “delicious” with a cool/young/masculine nuance. Or おいしいいい (“oishiiii”) which means delicious with a more formal/feminine nuance. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tough chunk of squid bouncing off your teeth or a divine slice of tuna metling in your mouth; it will rarely be necessary to speak your mind while in Japan. Stack up your plates to make them easier to count/compare with your friends, should the proceedings spiral into an unsightly eating competition.
While on the subject of fun and games, be sure to look out for the increasingly popular slot-sushi restaurants. These magical places, built for the child in all of us, combine two of working-class Japan’s favourite things; cheap sushi and gambling on slot machines. Every morsel you eat gets you a plate to slot into the dish receptacle under the conveyer belt. If you deposit enough plates the screen becomes one of a variety of slot machines and getting three in a row will win you a game/toy/keitai storappu (something to dangle off your mobile phone) in a plastic egg. If you needed any encouragement to fit in that one last plate of shrimp and avocado, the promise of a giant kinder egg might just seal the deal. And that’s what we at Of Rice and Zen call good business sense.
If you’ve already identified your favourite kind of sashimi and you’d like to try one that hasn’t been breathed on by dozens of strangers it’s time to reach for the intercom/touch screen. If it’s a futuristic touch screen, and increasingly it is, you’ll find your favourite sushi by category and you’ll probably be able to identify it by it’s photo. Press the sushi, select the number of plates you’d like and then keep your eyes open for your sushi. It’ll arrive on a dish labelled with the colour corresponding to your seat or table. If you’re sitting at the gold table, the sushi on the gold dish is for you and only you. If you’re really lucky the food could arrive on a tiny shinkansen that runs on a rail above the conveyer belt. If so be sure to press the red return button after you’ve taken your dish, so the chef can load it up for the next customer.
If the restaurant is using the older intercom system you’ll have to negotiate two challenges. The first being, “correctly pronounce your desired dish in Japanese”. The second and arguably more difficult is “figure out what is being said by the harassed and overworked teenage girl standing several feet away from the mic on the other end”. If you can do this you’ve no need to sit the level 2 Japan Language Proficiency test, you’ve already won a prize far more valuable than that small certificate. Raw fish.
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