One thing I miss living here in Hillbilly Hell Shopping Mall, is the lack of any good sushi. For a place that prides itsefl on bass fishing-they would not know a good piece of fish if it walked up and bit them on the ass.
Back on the right side of the international dateline-one of the fun little treats was to go to Kura Sushi. All plates 105 yen-and you ordered everything electronically from a cool little gizmo by your table.
As the video clip shows below-all the plats had a chip implanted-so it knew how old the sushi on the plate was- and you knew when your special ordered sushi was coming your way. When a plate has been going around the conveyor belt for too long, it is automatically classified as old sushi and dumped.
They even gave you a game to play when you cleaned up. Used plates are put into a slot, tallying the price of what you ate and sending the dish back for cleaning. For every 5 plates eaten, a little slot machine game is played. I loved winning prizes.
Sigh. Gotta get back.
That Sushi place looks AWESOME!! My husband just put in for Orders to Atsugi. We have been stuck in the “Black Hole” of Lemoore for too long. (It is very hard to get out of here.) Keeping our fingers crossed. We really want submerse ourselves into the Japanese culture as much as we can while we are there. Any suggestions about learning Japanese? (ie good schools one on one tutoring etc.) I have been trying to learn the basics for getting around town. I think I can get it with much much practice. There are so many syllables and sometimes I get tongue tied. My biggest fear is offending them. I know they have a lot of tradition even with the most common every day things like dinner. Looking forward to it though!!
I hope you get it. Atsugi is a great place- I miss it so much.
As for learning Japanese, here are two:
1) Find a teacher who will give you lessons. ( This can be hit or miss-but there are Nihonjin wives who will teach private lessons).
2) Do what I did and start with University of Maryland. Their courses 3 hours twice a week will give you a basic foundation. They won’t take you far enough to give you a genuine mastery of the language though. When I had gone as far as I could with them (4 courses) I moved on to a private school in Tokyo. Which was a good way to learn since it was ALL in Japanese. No English allowed. Problem was it was pricey and ran me over 400 a month. However since my goal was to pass the JLPT-it was kind of immersion I need.
You probably don’t need to do that private school route. Do the UMUC thing and then teach English or find a FUJIN ( Japanese American Wives club)-and try your Nihongo with them.
I got extra practice since I was seeing a lot of Japanese girls when I got to Japan-which I doubt is any of your options.
Watch NHK children’s shows. They have kids shows that teach English and believe it or not, you can “reverse engineer” from that. I did that too.
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions. We will most certainly look into some of these options.
Ha! Ha! No, dating won’t be an option for me! LOL! So, I am sure a FUJIN will be the next best thing, in my case. ;0)
I was definitely considering finding a person interested in learning English and then maybe we could teach each other the basics. I would however like the formal training as well. So, that is certainly not out of the question.
BTW…I would have never thought of the children’s shows…Ingenious!
Thanks again for your time!
I went to a sushi place like that in Yokohama. It was exactly identical, so it must have been a chain… 100 yens for two pieces of sushi… it was great…