Sushi at Roppongi

It was nearing dinner time and we were wandering around Roppongi looking for a place to enjoy some sushi. We found a mall and once inside, found a conveyor belt sushi place.  Even back at home we have conveyor belt sushi restaurants, so this part wasn’t new to us.  However, the ones I’ve seen all consisted of a conveyor belt circling around a big area where the chefs would prepare the sushi, and people sitting around the belt would just grab dishes if they wanted them.

This particular restaurant was a bit different in that the conveyor belt also came around to individual tables throughout the restaurant.  I’m not sure how many conveyor belts they had in order to do this, as there were quite a few individual tables, and in fact, 2 conveyor belts (one in each direction) would pass by our table and we grabbed from both. 

It was also the first time I had seen a restaurant with a hot water spout right at the table.  This ingenious idea meant that the waitress wouldn’t have to spend time re-filling your tea cups, as you can help yourself to as much hot water as you wanted right at your table.

The most memorable part of the meal came at the very end when it came time to pay.  At conveyor belt sushi restaurants, it is common for food to be served on different coloured plates.  Each colour would represent a different value and you would put all of the plates in a pile and the waitress would come by and manually calculate how much you’ve eaten and you pay the bill from there.  We called our waitress over, expecting her to calculate everything for us, but all she did was line up all of the plates and then took out a hand held scanner and scanned all of the plates.  This happened so fast that none of us knew what had just happened!  It turns out that at some restaurants, a computerized chip is placed inside the plate and with a quick scan, it can automatically calculate how much you’ve eaten and in turn, how much you owe.  Was it absolutely necessary?  Probably not, but it was super neat to see.