You gotta eat Sushi in Japan

I know it's rather cliche but when you are in Japan, you gotta eat Sushi. You can buy sushi from everywhere now, even from Tesco, Boots, M&S or Costco. I have even seen meat sushi, hah???
But once you go to Japan and try Sushi, you would know the real difference.

Sushi literally means sour-tasting as it originally started as a fermented rice and fish, adding vinegar for preservation. Sushi we know now (i.e. not fermented) was originated in late 18c to 19c in Tokyo (or known as Edo in those days), using freshly caught fish in Tokyo Bay (or Edo Bay). Wasabi is often smeared between the rice and a slice of raw fish to reduce the risk of food poisoning and light pinkish coloured sweet picked ginger, called gari, is eaten between sushi courses for cleansing palate and aiding digestion. You can eat sushi with fingers.

Eating sushi used to be a very special and expensive dining experience until conveyor belt sushi (kaitenzushi) gain popularity in 1970, making sushi inexpensive and more accessible to family dining.  According to wikipedia, the inventor of convener belt sushi had problems staffing his small sushi restaurant and had difficulties managing the restaurant by himself. Having watched beer bottles on a conveyor belt in an Asahi brewery, he designed and developed the first conveyor belt sushi in Osaka in 1958.

We went to Ganko-zushi, one of those conveyor belt sushi restaurant chains in Osaka for a quick lunch. Typical sushi plate (with 2 pieces of sushi) costs around £1.00 - 3.00 (based on exchange rate of approximately £1 = 180 or 185 yen last year). We ate reasonable quantity of sushi between 5 of us and came only about 6,000 yen, which was equivalent to approximately £35! Wow, definitely good value for money!

Window displays of what they serve.

We were seated by the rotating conveyor belt with good selections of sushi.  The restaurant was busy enough so turnover of sushi was good and you could still get almost freshly made sushi. Sushi chefs are constantly making sushi to add to conveyor belt, which is a good sign.

We love Anago (grilled eel with tasty sauce) so we ordered those to start with. By the way, you can get water or green tea for free, unlike some conveyor belt restaurants in UK who charge for a glass of water off the tap!

We also had tuna. This one was 180 yen which was about £1.00!!!

This one below is called gun-kan (literally meaning army ship) filled with sushi rice and tuna and grated mountain potato on top encased with seaweed.  This one was freshly made. If you can't find sushi on the conveyor belt or want fresh one, you can ask sushi chef to make one fresh for you.

You can also order miso soup with clams.

In the meantime, varieties of sushi keeps coming around. I see salmon sushi is approaching .....

I asked sushi chef to make me "aji" sushi or jack mackerel. This comes with grated ginger and chopped spring onion on top. This was yummy, especially sushi rice was hand-held warm.

Emily and Maria tried crab gratin and loved it. It had lots of crab meat inside!

We tried different types of sushi between us.

I think we had enough.....

It did not break our bank, in fact it was Emily and Maria's treat!  Even better!

As we were leaving the restaurant, more people kept coming in and chefs were busily preparing more sushi.

At home, you can also order sushi from nearby sushi shop to be delivered to your home (the one in the front).  Yellow ones are tamagozushi (egg), white ones are ika (squid), orange ones are sake (salmon), red ones are magiro (tuna), light pink ones are hamachi (Japanese amberjack) and silver one is saba (mackerel).

The ones in the back, brown sushi, are called "inarizushi", a pouch of fried tofu filled with sushi rice. It is named after the Shinto God Inari who is believed to have a fondness for fried tofu. The ones surrounding inarizushi are makizushi or rolled sushi wrapped in seaweed. These all home made by my mother.

The one in the middle is typical county-side food with tofu, fried tofu, cooked vegetables such as mountain potatoes, carrots, roots vegetables and also some local red akagai (surf clam).  These preserve well and are often eaten during year end or new year when shops are closed for holiday as they live in a small town in country side (although shops are not necessarily closed in a big city like Osaka or Tokyo anymore ....)

Huge sushi mug I bought for my husband for souvenir at Kansai International Airport

Sushi fridge magnet I bought at a Japanese department store.

Wow, talking about sushi makes me wanting to eat sushi in Japan. We just need to go back to Osaka again very soon.....

That's all forks!