Kai-Ten Sushi

When I decided to go to Japan during my study abroad session, I knew one of the things I had to do was go to a Kai-Ten sushi restaurant. For those who don’t know, this is what the Japanese call conveyor belt sushi. The sushi chef basically just makes plates and plates of sushi (sashimi, maki rolls, nigiri, etc) and places them on a conveyor belt. The patrons of the restaurant then go on to eat as much as they want and are charged by the number of plates they ate at the end. Different colored plates have different prices, so that’s how one would know what they are eating.

            Kai-Ten Sushi is not the best sushi you are going to find. But still, it is very cheap compared to great sushi and still incredible by American standards. I frequent sushi restaurants in Miami and the quality of this sushi surpassed most restaurants back home. Although I was not able to make it to a “good” sushi restaurant in Japan due to time and money constraints, I am happy that I got to experience sushi in this form.

Due to the fact that I did not want this to be my only meal for the night, I only ended up getting four plates. It may seem like a little, but each plate actually brings two pieces. This was actually a substantial enough meal to keep me full for a couple of hours, and it was relatively cheap for what I got. I got to try the mackerel nigiri, the unagi nigiri, the crab salad maki, and the inari. I had tried all of these before except for the inari. The inari is a pouch of fried tofu filled with rice. It was seasoned with some sweet sauces, and I actually enjoyed it a lot. My favorite piece of sushi though was the unagi, but that’s because I’m a big fan of this ingredient.

 Overall, the experience lived up to what I had imagined. It was fun and not too pretentious. It was a great way to start my night and lead me to some other food adventures in Japan.