A post about sushi, as a metaphor for the challenges facing Japanese society

I love Kaiten Sushi. Let me explain.

Kaiten Sushi is a type of sushi restaurant where the sushi comes along on little plates on a conveyor belt, and you pick up the plates you want and eat them. Each plate is color coded so you know how expensive it is. It's fun, and you can eat exactly how much and what you want. Plus, in Tokyo, it's pretty cheap.

For more info, see wikipedia article.

But my post today is not about just any old Kaiten sushi places, but a specific subclass. The dollar store of sushi, I'm talking about the 100 yen kaiten sushi places, where EVERY PLATE IS 100 YEN! (105 with tax).
As you can imagine, this is the lowest rung on the sushi totem pole, but in the busiest areas of Japan, like, say, Tokyo, they can actually be quite good because of the extremely high volume.

There is a place in Shibuya I found, hidden in the middle of the crazy shopping district, very small but always full, that I've been to a lot. 10 plates is plenty of food, and that's about $9 for a sushi dinner of 20 pieces! Not bad. Of course, they didn't have the most expensive types of sushi, or the greatest selection, but they had all the basics like salmon (sake), tuna(maguro), yellowtail(hamachi), clam(asari), scallop(hotoke), eel(unagi), sea eel (anago), and various rolls, etc. Sometimes I think they put on a bit too much wasabi, but that's easily rectified with a little chopstick work. The place has a 7 plate per 30 minute minimum for singles, but for me that's no problem!

Now, I was feeling adventurous the other night and decided to search out another 100 yen kaiten sushi place I found on the internet. It seemed pretty popular (a big chain around the country), so I went to check it out. They had almost 60 different plates of sushi, ALL for 100 yen, and even had some of the best types of sushi like fatty tuna (toro) and crab (kani) and even steak sushi (steak :) ). Anyway, when I got there there was a line of nearly an hour. I took a number and signed in with a touch screen machine. Since I was alone, I got in pretty quick and they ushered me to my seat.... Wow, this place was high tech.
Let me try and describe it. Unlike most kaiten sushi places, nobody had stacks of empty plates in front of them . Instead, there was a slot for you to stick your plates in front of you. Plus, there was a touch screen when you could order specific dishes for each seat. when I ordered one, it came along the belt a few minutes later and the screen beeped louder and louder until it was right in front of me... dang.
The sushi was excellent, but all the sushi chefs were hidden behind in a kitchen where the conveyor belt disappeared into before emerging on the other side.

Compare this to my usual place in Shibuya, where there are 4-5 sushi chefs in the middle of a small ring, constantly yelling orders at each other in a sing-song sushi chef fashion. One of the an older fellow who's probably worked there for 30 years, the rest young-in's that look like they're fresh out of high school or college... With people all around and precarious stacks of plates obstructing people's views of the sushi... Where the seats are WAY too close together and the menu on the wall is covered in corrections and additions depending on that day's selection.

Perhaps my point is that, Japan is a master of efficiency, no doubt, but there is a point at which it becomes too much. Will I go back to the nearly fully automated place? Maybe. But will I keep coming back to my little haven of old-school sushi rotation? You bet.