'Revolving' Sushi ...

What do you imagine from the name 'revolving' sushi? (kaiten-zushi in Japanese). If you're thinking about a piece of sushi spinning around like a top, guess again!

Kaiten-zushi can't easily be translated into English but how about: plates of sushi on a conveyor belt that customers can select by themselves. Hmm. Just look at the picture!


More upmarket restaurants have conveyor belt moving in a large square. Customers sit at booths or a counter on the outside and choose any dish they like. Sushi chefs are in the middle and prepare new dishes. You can also check the daily menu or regular menu and order sushi directly from the chef closest to you. You might shout something like 'fatty tuna' or 'sweet shrimp'. I prefer ordering directy because it means your sushi is really fresh and hasn't dried out at all. Plus I like the combination of cold fish and warm rice!

All of the dishes are color coded, so choosing sushi on a white plate means it costs 120yen, ranging up in price to black dishes at about 500yen or gold dishes at about 700yen. You stack up the dishes and at the end a waitress counts how many of each color you have and tallies up the bill. My favorite of this kind of kaiten zushi is Yamato.

The pictures in this post come from a different kind of restaurant. ALL dishes cost 105yen so you don't have to worry about which ones you choose. The only difference is some sushi has wasabi (Japanese horseradish) and some doesn't. That's why the stack of dishes has two different colors. In cheap restaurants, the chefs stay in a kitchen out the back and the belt has booths or counters on both sides. I guess some staff are trained chefs, but believe it or not, nowadays there are machines that squeeze out sushi rice balls. That is why the price is lower, and of course the fish is mostly smaller and not of the best quality. If you want to order something you use an intercom that is fitted to your booth.

But a new restaurant in Tsukuba, Hamazushi, has gone one step further. Each booth has a touch pad screen like you can find on an ATM at the bank. You simply press the picture of which sushi you want. When it comes the screen beeps to let you know you have to get it. Specially ordered sushi have numbers and are raised up on dishes so that no-one else grabs them!

And most restaurants have other dishes as well as sushi. Hamazushi has really good mango pudding.Finally, if you check the top picture again you can see a metal thing in the middle of the picture. This is an outlet for hot water to make green tea. You put powdered tea into a cup and press it against the black button and hot water comes out.

revolve - 回転する
top - こま
conveyor belt - 流れ作業用運搬ベルト
upmarket - 高級品市場向けの,高所得層向けの
color code - 色で塗り分ける
tally up - …を勘定［計算，総計］する