Henrik especially wanted to go to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, otherwise known as a Kaiten-Zushi and Ian happened to know one a few stations away. We found it alright but then had to stand outside for a while trying to remember how to say “three people.” Inside we delivered our instructions and they sat us in the waiting area with the other hungry customers who were all Westerners like us.
Now the only sushi I had ever eaten before was a £3 packet of vegetable sushi from Eat in Paddington station. That was a poor introduction to eating sushi and about 100 times less complicated. Sitting down in front of the little conveyor belt of food passing slowly in front of me I was first reminded of The Generation Game. When I saw the menu which tried its best to explain how much eat plate was, but ultimately failed in this endeavour, I was more reminded of a kind of backwards Argos.
Around the restaurant were all these people working out their next dish. Some looked deadly serious and you could see their hunter gatherer instincts coming into play. They were watching the food carefully, stalking the passing prey and looking into the horizon to see if there were any tastier morsals coming than what they could reach now. It looked like some people were estimating whether their plate would survive the journey, competition for food between predators is strong in a busy sushi place and someone could easily get their first.
As an ignorant ex-veggie I had no idea what to eat, or even how to eat it. My first plate I chose purely because it looked harmless, I could see some egg and what looked like rice wrapped in seaweed. As I took it off the conveyor belt Ian said “That’s a brave choice.” I told him my reasons for choosing it and he looked slightly worried.
First I tried to eat it in bits, but soon realised that isn’t the way of sushi, it’s all or nothing. Once the thing fell apart from my fumbling I was shown how to pick it up from the sides and then finally I managed to get into my mouth.
And it was horrible. When I eat eggs sometimes I feel like I am going to be sick, it’s something to with eggs and it might just be me. This feeling was at least tripled when the whole egg yolk exploded into my mouth combined with the fermented soy beans that it came with. Finally free they formed a sticky goo in my mouth which played hide and seek with my teeth as I tried to chew. I swallowed it, my first proper sushi and it was gone.
Ian was impressed and admitted that he had not wanted to tell me before that it is the favourite dish of only seasoned Japanese sushi eaters and that he himself finds it disgusting. Sigh.
Next I had some salmon because I was told that it was nice and at least, “slightly cooked.” Please remember that I am new to the world of eating fish, I had not eaten any for years before a few months ago and here I was eating it raw, if very slowly and with a lot of tea. I tried salmon, and something else and they were ok if a bit chewy. There was a nice looking bowl going around of vegetables and being a chocoholic rabbit at heart I happily took it. As I did so Henrik said to me, “So you like octopus?” I dug under the lettuce leaves and sure enough there were little bits of octopus complete with small suckers. Now to be honest I didn’t actually notice the suckers till I had eaten most of the octopus pieces. After seeing them though I couldn’t eat anymore, it was going too far. For instance, imagine an octopus, quite a small one with 8 white squishy waving legs and a big black eye staring at you. Now imagine going right up close to it, towards its tentacles, you can see the suckers. Now imagine opening your mouth and licking one of those suckers. See it’s just wrong.
In these sushi places, as you probably know, they devise your bill by counting the tower of empty plates you leave behind; it’s like they are only concerned with how much washing up you cause them. Ian had an impressive 16, Henrik 12 and me 5. I stopped early not because I was particularly full or feeling frugal but because I was worried my food might have a return ticket and that I would be seeing it again in a different form.
I am happy to say that I didn’t.
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