Work is a very important aspect of life here in Tokyo, but it is often said that people are truly defined by what they do outside of work. In a city this big, there is no shortage of fun, interesting things to do, but I’ve identified a few activities that seem to be enjoyed by nearly everyone here in Japan. For instance, after a hard day’s work, the first thing most people here like to do is more work. Alternatively, many people also enjoy the indiscriminate consumption of sea life. Having done enough work for a while, I recently decided to engage in the latter.
This engagement took the form of me going to a sushi bar with my family. You might be surprised to know that, even after living here close to two and a half years, this was my first ever sushi bar experience. We ended up going to a kaitenzushi restaurant. In Japanese kaiten means “rotating” and zushi means “sushi spelled with a z for some reason.” This type of restaurant is so called due to the fact that various pieces of sushi are constantly rolling past your table on a large conveyor belt. If you see something you like, you simply pluck it from the belt.
This is some sushi.
Of course you can also order whichever particular kind of sushi you want via the touchscreen ordering system at each table. Curious about how the system worked, I asked my wife how we would be able to identify which pieces of sushi rolling by were the ones that we ordered. She said, with certainty, “I don’t know.” Undaunted, yet unsatisfied, I mustered up my best Japanese and posed the same question to my father-in-law, which, to him, probably sounded something like “waoanbgoadgoakdjfnc,xkdaidgl?” Fortunately, though, he did seem to understand and promptly replied “They’re going to arrive on the shinkansen.”
Sushi on the conveyor belt.
If you don’t know, a shinkansen is a long-distance high-speed train usually used for traveling between cities or even across the country. I was more than a little perplexed by this answer. Still unsatisfied but this time quite daunted, I decided just to leave it at that. Soon after, however, I noticed a red light blinking above the conveyor belt next to our table. Before I could ask what it was, a miniature shinkansen arrived at our table bearing small plates of sushi. It was completely awesome. I ended up ordering quite a bit more than I could eat, just for the novelty of it. It made me wonder what other businesses could be improved by a tiny shinkansen delivery system.
Sushi on a shinkansen. Or a sushinkansen.
