There is sushi and then there is sushi

 One of my housemates got a sudden craving for sushi and asked if anyone wanted to tag along. I have never turned down raw fish and thought it would be another delicious meeting with nature's little snacks, of course I tagged along.

He asked us what we thought of sushi and all of us said that we liked it. One of my housemates were a little sceptical to the fish but really loved the fried tofu variety. 

What  I didn't consider what that I had never really had freshly made sushi prepared less than a minute from consumption. I had eaten lots of sushi before in Sweden, Ireland, Taiwan, America and on my previous visits to Japan. I mostly enjoyed it like a lot, the exception being the frozen sushi dishes bought at Swedish food stores. They were at best tasteless and at worst the rice was not cooked enough making it taste like wet sand and gave away Nemo's hiding spot.

 Our sushi craving housemate told us that the place we were going to was a so called conveyor belt sushi restaurant. That means that a small conveyor belt is running along all the seating areas in the restaurant with small plates of sushi up for anyone to grab. Different colored plates had different prices and in this case the red plates had a 21 yen discount per plate due to the recent baseball tournament landing one plate neatly on 99 yen.

I had been to conveyor belt sushi restaurants before but this one had this! Tes, that's right, you could special order anything you didn't find on the conveyor belt and have it delivered to your seat on a small toy train! I am not going to bash other restaurants but I definitely think this would be an awesome idea for other kinds of restaurant as well!

When we got our first plates I was first struck by how clearer and brighter the fish looked. I had gotten used to sushi looking like, well, sushi. To start with the salmon had a bright red color I hadn't seen before and it can't really be seen that well on the pictures, but you get the idea.

And the taste was definitely much better than I had ever tried before. It almost melted right away in my mouth. My housemate also taught me that you don't dip the rice in soy sauce but instead either take the fish meat and dip it lightly or use your hands and turn the sushi up side down and let the top barely touch the surface of the soy plate. And wow, that made a huge difference. My other sin was that I mixed large amounts of wasabi in the soy, turning it to a small plate of brown fiery liquid. Instead, a properly made sushi should have a small amount of wasabi between the rice and meat as glue. This gives it just that extra kick without killing your tastebuds.

I loved them all, but I didn't care too much for the squid or octopus as I found it to hard to chew. They both tasted great but only the texture was a bit off putting.

I managed to finish ten plates with two pieces per plate and I could barely move afterwards. Though it might've been considered not that high scale of a restaurant, this experience truly taught me a valuable lesson between what is food and what is an experience. I have reconsidered sushi from being a trendy kind of fast food to a gourmand's trekking through the deep seas. Properly made, properly enjoyed.

Expenses

• 20 pieces of sushi 880 yen (got a discount coupon that I used right away)