Hanamaru Sushi: Converyor belt sushi

We were really excited to cross off one of our top Japan bucket list items with Anthony and Allyson - conveyor belt sushi at Hanamaru Sushi. It's a place that comes highly recommended, and this was the third time we had tried to eat there. Believe it or not, the line you see here is by far the shortest we've encountered, and we got there right when it opened at 11AM!

There is a central prep kitchen at the center of the small restaurant. The chefs work nonstop, preparing new dishes which they place on the constantly circulating conveyor belt which passes by each table in the restaurant. Anytime you see something you want to eat, you grab it! They make pricing really easy too. Each plate's color tells you how much that dish is: blue plate - Y140, yellow plate - Y194, pink plate - Y248, green plate - Y291, red plate - Y345, and "fireworks plate" - Y453. That means you're getting two sashimi or four maki for between $1.25 and $4.00!!

My favorite two plates were the seared salmon sashimi (center in the picture below) and the asparagus maki. Oiyshi! Delicious!

The variety of options that passed by throughout the meal was amazing!

Fiona loved watching all interesting plates and choosing new things to try. Thank goodness we had Daddy with us to polish off her rejects - they certainly weren't all hits in her book.

Once she finished eating, she declared the natto maki - rolls on the blue plate between the inari sushi (deep fried tofu pockets filled with sushi rice, bottom left) and the clear bowl of salad.

Natto is a traditional Japanese food made from soybeans that have been fermented with a specific bactirium -Bacillus subtitles var. natto. It is apparently really good for you - high in vitamins K and C as well as iron and fiber. It is typically eaten alone and has a strong flavor and smell as well as a stronage consistency, but as a maki roll, I didn't find it to have much flavor. The texture on the other hand... I'll let the picture speak for itself:

In any case, Fiona liked it and that's all that really matters, right?

Jason had no trouble finding many favorites - in fact I think the only thing he didn't enjoy was the squid sashimi that got passed down to him from Fiona.

At the end of the meal, you are left with a stack of plates.

You signal to a server that you are finished and he or she comes to your table to count how many of each plate color you have and total the cost of your meal. Between the three of us, we ate about 20 plates of sushi and only paid $40. Can't wait to go back!