I was thinking about sushi and sashimi the other day. Actually, the sushi that Sue and I used to get in a particular restaurant in Tokyo. The chefs prepared the sushi and sashimi and placed the dishes on the conveyor belt that ran in front of the customers. You picked whatever dishes caught your fancy. The plates were colour coded, with each colour being a different price: so dishes on brown plates were cheap and cheerful and dishes on bright blue plates were very expensive with all the colours in between costing differently. The prices were displayed on little charts in front of each diner. Also for each diner there was a hot water tap so that you make your own tea or green tea. There were waitresses but they only served sake and totaled up your bill at the end of your meal. “Aaah, 3 brown, 2 yellow and a green – 500 Yen “. I used to keep them busy just bringing fresh flasks of sake, I love that stuff.
Helen was visiting Japan as a member of her karate club team and so we arranged to meet her for dinner. The pictures are from that day. Notice the large stack of plates to the left (my spot), compared to Sue’s more modest pile….. just shows what a pig I am for good sushi.
There was a more conventional restaurant attached to this one and it was in there one day that we saw “Pickled Guts of a Sea Squirt” on the menu. I had to order it. I ate it (only once though) but to this day I’m not really sure what it was. Dining in Tokyo could be a very exciting experience. You could eat very expensive or very, very, cheaply depending on where you wanted to go. A very substantial meal in a local noodle shop would cost a couple of bucks, the restaurant we used to use on a Sunday (I needed meat!!) was verty expensive, at least by American standards. They would bring huge covered hot trays on wheels round to each table and carve the beef or prime rib (whatever meat you wanted) right there. Awseome!! I’ll go back to Japan one day, I loved every minute of it…..
