Friday, July 18, 2014
Hidemi’s Rambling No.521
I happened to find a conveyor belt sushi restaurant in the city where I
often go shopping. For those who aren’t familiar with it, let me explain
what it is. Conveyor belt sushi is a self-service system to serve sushi
on a narrow conveyor that winds around the restaurant. Sushi is put on a
small plate by two pieces, or by one piece for an expensive kind, and
those plates are continuously moving on the conveyor. Tables are set
along the conveyor and a customer grabs a desired plate when it passes
by. Usually it costs $1 per plate, and a customer pays according to the
number of their empty plates. Tea and condiments are free. I hadn’t
eaten at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant for years and during my
absence, it has made remarkable progress. The place I got in was one of
the major chains and had a state-of-the-art system. For a customer who
wanted to order a kind other than what were going around on the
conveyor, there was a touch screen display above each table. It showed a
huge variety of sushi and all I had to do to place an order was just
select and touch. An additional, express conveyor was running above the
normal conveyor and the plates of my order were riding on a miniature
bullet train. The train appeared from the kitchen, running fast on the
additional conveyor, and stopped at my table. After I picked up the
plates from the bullet train and touched ‘OK’ on the display, the train
went back in the kitchen. I had never seen anything like that. The place
fascinated me entirely. It was spacious and clean with a modern,
westernized atmosphere, western background music, and a booth. Eating
was done without seeing people working there except when I entered and
when I paid. That I didn’t have to watch a hardheaded sushi chef was so
comfortable and felt free. And the variety on their menu was amazing. In
addition to popular kinds of sushi, they had the original sushi like
roast pork, duck pastrami, hamburger steak and so on. It wasn’t just
sushi coming on the conveyor. They had different kinds of miso soup,
tempura, fried chicken and desserts. Above all, almost every plate was
only $1 so that I had as much sushi as I could eat! It was so exciting
to spot my favorite kind on the conveyor and see its plate moving toward
my table from the far end. It’s also thrilling to see if other customer
might pick it up before me. The bullet train was extreme fun. I enjoyed
even watching it carry other table’s order and passing through my table
with a small wheel sound. I touched ‘Checkout’ on the screen display
when I finished eating. A server came to my table and counted the empty
plate I stacked up high. I received the bill and paid at the cashier.
They didn’t take a credit card and accepted cash only. The payment
method was terribly low-tech somehow. While I wish to eat there as often
as I can, my partner said he couldn’t because he felt dizzy as he
watched so many sushi plates coming and going around him…
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Hidemi’s Rambling No.520
Let me report how a small rural town I live in has been lately. Since
there are many skiing slopes in the town, the forlorn main street has
ski lodges, B and Bs, souvenir shops and rental ski shops. Quite a few
had been out of business as the skiing boom was gone. One out of every
three shops is closed now along the street. The other day I found that
my favorite shop there hung a sign saying ‘For Rent’. The shop was my
dream shop that carried imported foods and goods from U.S. Imported
merchandise is usually costly, but that shop sold selected Costco-brand
foods at almost the same prices at Costco or sometimes lower prices.
Considering the membership fee at Costco, they cost less here. The stamp
card of the shop was also magical. They gave the customers stamps
according to the sum of purchase and the accumulated stamps were
exchanged for the merchandise. Those stamps were ridiculously easy to be
collected and I couldn’t count how many bottles of salsa I got for
free. In addition, the shop often held a prize drawing event. The
drawing always came out with a prize and I got numerous freebies such as
pouches and stuffed animals. I had never left the shop without
something free in my bag. It was almost charity for me and I felt the
more I shopped, the more the shop was in the red. That maybe proved
true. The shop has been closed for good and sadly my strange rule that
my favorite place is almost certainly to be out of business worked again
just as I had been afraid of. The number of children in the town has
decreased and several schools were merged into one. That one school is
also small and the local bus started to be partly operated as a school
bus. Noisy kids rush in the bus in the afternoon and I can’t use it any
more. My favorite modern restaurant in town has had more and more closed
days. Now it closes on three days of weekdays and opens only for three
hours each on the remaining two weekdays. One of the B and Bs on the
main street newly got out of business and came into the market. The
price was unbelievably low. Even so, nobody bought it and the price got
even lower. It’s less than a tenth of a typical house price for three
times the space of a typical house. It was cheap enough for me to think
of running a B and B myself. I quickly came to my senses that getting
into the black with a B and B in this town is nearly impossible. To add
to my town’s miserable conditions, my own income also will be reduced by
one third starting next month…
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