Eating Sushi In Fujiyoshida

I’m sorry to say there are no pictures to go along with this story but once you’ve read it, you’ll understand why.

So I’ll start with some unpopular opinions. Personally I’m not the hugest fan of seafood and sushi has never been my first choice of meal but when in Japan of course I was going to try it. That combined with Athena and my complete and utter lack of Japanese conversing skills lead us to the conclusion that classic Japanese conveyor belt sushi was the way to go for us. We could wait, choose by sight and have limited embarrassing interaction with sushi chefs who would think us uncultured swine. That being said at least we did our research before hand in some basic sushi etiquette, which ended up being helpful, but not enough.

The sushi place our hostel manager had recommended was indeed conveyor belt sushi, but having not eaten much all day and being starving that we were we went in at about 5:30/6 and it was EMPTY. Like not a single other person, conveyor belts not rolling, just a host and two sushi chefs at a bar sitting and hanging out. Yes they were open and we were sat at the bar right between the two chefs. And so began one of the most delicious, awkward, comical and minorly humiliating experiences of my life. I had become unfortunately spoiled by most Japanese peoples ability to understand and typically speak fluent English. Our two sushi chefs in fujiyoshida….not so much. They gave us a menu and thank god there were pictures to communicate and with them both staring down at us from above we managed to order some food. Silly me being the American that I am who says thank you every time a waiter comes to the table in the US, kindly origato-ed to each dish he served causing the sue-chef to chuckle and smile at us and point to say “Canadian?” And so began a non lingual conversation of hand movements and occasional English words on their end. After we’d eaten our fill, and still with not a single other person in the restaurant we managed to mime “check” and thanked the chefs one last time as we walked to the counter to pay with the two of them stifling full belly’s of laughter as we left.

As to the quality of the sushi though, this was something next level to anything I’ve ever had before pretending to be seafood. Eel that melted in your mouth, delectable fatty tuna with just the right about of wasabi, and the best damn pickled ginger over ever had. That and a full meal for two came out to about ¥1800 or about $16.50! Satisfied and mortified Athena and I made it out the door and broke out into laughter of our own, but hey first awkwardly delicious foreign meal in the books! Sorry for the lack of photos but I couldn’t bring myself to photograph my food with two chefs chuckling and staring down at us.