When in Rome (or Japan)...

Last Saturday (Oct. 18) I went to sushi for lunch.  I know what you are thinking, "Julie went to sushi for lunch?  She doesn't even like seafood!"  This is true.  I have never liked seafood and I still don't, but I went for sushi with my friend, Michelle.

Cucumber Rolls are oishii!

There you go--proof I ate sushi.  I always knew there was non-seafood sushi at sushi restaurants/bars just like there is always a token non-seafood entree at a seafood restaurant; I just didn't think there would be enough options for a complete non-seafood meal.  It turns out I was wrong.

So last Saturday was the last day of soccer.  My friend Michelle was in the same position I was.  Her daughter is on my youth team and their game was at 10:00 am.  My women's team, which Michelle plays on, played at 3:30 pm.  Both games were at Nimitz and while having four hours between games gave us the time to go home in between, it really didn't make sense to do that so we hung out together all day.  Michelle suggested going to sushi for lunch.  I was reticent, as you could imagine, until Michelle mentioned she doesn't eat seafood either and that it was her favorite restaurant.  This intrigued me and I figured, "When in Rome..." so I agreed.

I'm really not sure what the restaurant is called.  It is located at the new mall near Main Base.  Everyone just refers to it as "sushi" or "sushi-go-round."  I think the actual name is Sushiro.  I was able to find out the website from the receipt.  It's really cool because there are all these individual booths with a conveyor belt that runs alongside them.  Each booth has a touch screen ordering system (with an English language function).  All the food travels along the conveyor belt just like luggage on a luggage belt at the airport.  There are various items where you can just grab the plate off the belt or you can order a specific food using the touch screen and then it will arrive on a color-coded serving tray on the belt.  The atmosphere alone was just worth the trip.

Sushi conveyor belt.  White plates are "regular" sushi.  Yellow
plates have wasabi added.  The touch screen is at the top.

The table had everything you might need:  a box of chopsticks,
two different types of soy sauce, ginger, green tea powder and
a spigot for hot water.  There is also a pricing guide--round plates
cost Y100, square plates cost Y180.

I had cucumber rolls, which I totally knew they would have, but I didn't expect them to have salad, ramen, french fries (Michelle's kids had them) or even ice cream.  I tried some of Michelle's favorites like prosciutto with apples and roasted pork with scallions as well as something she'd never tried like Japanese roast beef.  After nearly one of each of all the non-seafood items, we were full.  Michelle pushed a button on the touch screen and nearly instantaneously a person came to our table.  He counted our plates to calculate the cost (using a specialized ruler so he didn't have to actually count thus expediting the process), entered it into a hand-held scanner, scanned a laminated sheet with a bar code on it and gave it to us.  Then to pay we took the sheet to the register and the bar code gets scanned again bringing up the information that was calculated at the table and we then paid.

Various types of sushi and bowls of ramen.

Sushi plates ready to be counted.

It was all a very interesting (and very Japanese) experience.  I was glad Michelle took me (and treated me) to lunch there.  I would go there again but I wouldn't call it a favorite place.  I was excited to have Matt and the kids go there so they could experience it for themselves.  Today we did just that.  As I expected, Matt and Leah liked it and would go again but Aaron wanted nothing to do with it.  I ordered him french fries and he ate only four (and that was only so he could have ice cream).  He refused to try anything, even if it was stuff he likes, such as ham, because it was "Japanese."  Ironically, Japanese ice cream seems to be the exception to Aaron's self-imposed ban on Japanese food.

Matt trying the prosciutto.  The roast beef was his favorite.

Leah liked the plain ramen noodles, the chicken nuggets,
the rice from the sushi (but not the meat) and of course,
the ice cream.

In between the two Saturday sushi visits, I went out to eat lunch one day with my friend Kathy (obviously not my FL friend Kathy, but my Australian friend Kathy who lives here) at a place near Hario called Brick.

The Brick is the tiniest of places about ten minutes from where we live.  It is a bakery and lunch place and it is the size of a very small house.  There are maybe about a dozen (mostly two-person) tables at most for seating.  There are even less parking spaces available.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of the building to show how small it was.  I have driven by it a bunch of times and always wondered what it was like to eat there but it never seemed open to me.  Kathy said, "it is like having three old ladies fix you lunch."  Lunch is available from 11:30 am - 2:00 pm and there are three sets (think combo meals) to choose from:  a sandwich set, a pizza set and a hamburger set.  It was almost like a mini-buffet and it only cost Y500 (a little less than $5 with the current exchange rate).  We each got the hamburger set.  (Japanese people, in my experience, do not cook pizza correctly.  It's always soggy.)  It included a small hamburger, a salad served in a cupcake liner (to give you a sense of size), three slices of fruit, a tall shot glass amount of soup, something that resembled a bread pudding, piece of cake about the size of a eraser and a small cream puff.  It also included a drink which is a choice of orange juice or coffee.  Kathy said she brought her husband, Nick, once and he left hungry but it was plenty for us.

The hamburger set at the Brick.

I would go back to the Brick again too but again, not a favorite.  It is hard to beat the value for the money, though.  Between the recent onsen experience and eating at the local restaurants, I am feeling very Japanese-y these last few weeks.  When in Sasebo....