I happened to come across information on the Internet about a sushi
restaurant that is close enough to get on foot from the bus station.
Since I don’t have a car, the access by public transportation or on foot
is essential for me wherever I go. Combined with the rural area I live
in that has sparse places to eat, finding an accessible restaurant is
rare. I went for it right away.
I don’t like a regular sushi restaurant. It usually has a counter
only, with a peevish master behind it. You order directly to him and eat
in front of him. It’s impossible for me to relax and enjoy eating in
that kind of strained setting. That’s why I eat out sushi exclusively at
a conveyor belt sushi restaurant that has no master. It’s a very
popular type of sushi restaurant in Japan and there are many major
chains. It has both a counter and tables beside which a narrow, long
belt conveyor is moving. On a conveyor, small plates of sushi are
arrayed. Various kinds of sushi circulates inside a big restaurant like a
toy train, coming and going in front of customers. You just pick up
what you want to eat and the price is told by the color of the plate.
Orders also can be placed via a tablet that is set at each table. You
just tap what you want, and it comes on the conveyor in a special
container. You can order or pick up a plate as many as you want, and
leave and pile the empty plates on your table. When you finish eating
and touch ‘Check Out’ on the tablet, a human server came to your table
at last and count the stack of empty plates so that the total amount of
your payment is written or bar-coded on a sheet of paper. You bring it
to a cashier and pay.
My new finding was that conveyor type of sushi restaurant. The place
seemed to have been remodeled recently and looked new and stylish. The
tables were all booths, looking as if sushi was moving around inside
Denny’s. Added to dozens of varieties of sushi, other items were
abundant on the menu. Hamburger steak, fried potato, noodles, fried pot
stickers, edamame, cakes, ice cream and parfait, not to mention beer,
sake, and fresh coffee. They all came on the conveyor after you tap the
tablet. And, above all, everything tasted good and the price was so low!
Most plates carried two pieces of sushi at one dollar. As I avoided the
lunch hour, the place was near empty and the atmosphere was superb.
Since I liked the restaurant so much, I returned there with my
partner three days later. When I walked toward the place, I noticed a
beef bowl restaurant next to the sushi place was totally empty without
any customers. An empty place is my favorite, and I jumped in.
Beef bowl restaurants are also popular in Japan. They are fast
restaurants mainly for Japanese business persons who don’t have enough
time and money to eat lunch. They gobble up at a counter and dash out.
That makes the place all efficiency and price, not atmosphere of the
sort. I had hated it for that and never been a big fan, but this
particular beef bowl place I found was different.
It was also recently remodeled and the interior was pretty and clean.
It had quite a few tables besides the counter, looking like a family
restaurant rather than a beef bowl place. I enjoyed the low-priced,
big-volume beef bowl in a relaxing atmosphere there. Then we moved to
the sushi place where I had sake and appetizers while my partner had
coffee and parfait.
As for the payment, $12 at the beef bowl place and $15 at the sushi
place for two people, tax included and tips unnecessary. It probably can
happen only in Japan that eating delicious meals at low prices in an
excellent atmosphere is possible. But not that everything is rosy. With
these two eat-outs in a week, I hit a new high of my weight for this
year...
Friday, December 7, 2018
Sushi and Beef Bowl Restaurants hr613
Labels:
Beef Bow,
Japan,
Japanese food,
lunch,
restaurant,
Sake,
sushi