Must-Try in Japan: Sushi-Go-Round

It is always a big issue that what food we should try during a trip. In Japan, it might be SUSHI, TEMPURA, RAMEN, KOBE BEEF, TEPPAN YAKI, etc.. And then, even after deciding what to eat, where to eat becomes a new cause of your concern. No one wants wasting precious trip time to have an expensive but so-so dish.

In Japan, if you want to try SUSHI without Japanese escorts, I strongly recommend going a sushi-go-round restaurant. Of course you can visit ”SUKIYABASHI JIRO" or "KYUBEI", Michelin star sushi bars, to enjoy their superb taste. But you might be embarrassed by unique etiquettes such as how to order and what to eat there. Moreover even today, in sushi restaurants where raw food materials are purchased in the market and cooked, the food materials change day by day, or season by season and thus they do not indicate menus or price tags in particular and the courses such as 'market value' or 'whatever' are seen.　Actually, a few Japanese eat sushi at such a top-tier restaurants. Usually they are used for a business dinner with non Japanese, i.e., their target is a company expense, not our private wallet.

Where do most Japanese eat sushi? The answer is a sushi-go-round restaurant. You can try what you want even if you can't understand Japanese. You can see sushi rotating on a conveyer belt and pick up whatever you want. Furthermore, you can identify prices by the colors of dishes, e.g. white plate is JPY100, blue is JPY150 and so on. 

Due to fierce competition, you can see Japanese high-tech at some restaurants. You may order dishes by a tablet PC and a small bullet train carries them to you. You can pay at a checking machine that calculates your bills by RFID embedded at the dishes. It is highly automated.

And the last but not least, their sushi quality is pretty high.

The following restaurants are my recommendations. Probably you have to wait more than 30mins in a queue but worth it. 

(1) MAWASHI SUSHI KATSU (Meguro, TOKYO)

http://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1316/A131601/13004540/

(2) MUMAZUKOU (Shinjuku, TOKYO)

http://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1304/A130401/13004192/

(3) KAISEN (Miura, KANAGAWA)

http://tabelog.com/en/kanagawa/A1406/A140603/14002771/

(4) MATSURIYA (Kushiro, HOKKAIDO)

http://tabelog.com/en/hokkaido/A0112/A011201/1006346/

(5) SEIJIRO (Morioka, IWATE)

http://tabelog.com/en/iwate/A0301/A030101/3000998/

Of course, there are a lot of other sushi-go-round restaurants and you can easily find them in a city area. So don't miss trying them. If you don't like one after trying some dishes, you can just leave and try next by paying as you eat.