More Pictures of Dead Stuff from the Ocean...

...but this time we were actually eating it...sorry no jelly fish in this post...yesterday chieko and i, along with one of our friends, went out to a sushi restaurant, and not just any sushi restaurant, but one of those quirky sushi places where the sushi winds its way through the restaurant on a conveyor belt...in actuality, this type of restaurant is not quirky at all, nor is it the novelty it would be in the states...these places are everywhere, and they offer fresh, tasty, relatively cheap eats...this particular place was so tasty that chieko dragged me there again today...i like sushi, to an extent, but two days in a row?? but i'm a good husband (whip crack!!) and i went along with her...i remember thinking yesterday as we sat eating in the packed restaurant 'damn i should have brought my camera'...plate upon plate of sushi drifting by, the counter jammed with people, it was oh so japanese...so today, wise me, i brought along the camera...unfortunately, as you can see below, we JUST missed the lunch rush, hence no people, and they were making sushi to order, so an empty conveyor belt...this picture is pure irony, i tell ya...
...however, take note of the sub-conveyor belt under the main one, and the spigot on the counter...the sub-conveyor ferries tea cups, and the spigot produces piping hot water...in one of those boxes on the counter are tea bags...i know, that comes nowhere near making up for an empty conveyor belt...



...so, the sushi comes on plates like these...they are color coded according to price...some fancy places have chips inside the plates so when you're done, they just scan your stack of plates...this place is more old fashioned and they actually tabulate your bill by hand...usually you get two pieces of whatever it is your eating on each plate...they range in price from about $2 for your run of the mill fish, to $10 for a big fatty hunk of tuna that in the west we would probably make cat food out of, but that they simply love here in japan...



...i generally stick to pretty tame stuff at the sushi joints...tuna, salmon, perhaps a shrimp or two, and below you'll see i had a cucumber sushi thing...i'm still easing my way into raw seafood here...chieko, on the other hand, eats all sorts of crazy raw shxt...fish meatballs (they're cooked), fish eggs, fish eyes, fish bones, fish intestines, squid, octopus, oyters, some crap that looks like the chef scraped off his shoe and threw on top of some rice...and according to her, i'm missing out on something...one thing i admire about the japanese diet is that they really don't wast much of whatever animal they are consuming...can't say i've quite been inspired yet though...



...so tonight i sit, recline actually, reminicing about my sushi lunch, and hoping all that raw stuff won't come back to haunt me...there is thunder rumbling away outside, which i love, and i do believe i will be nodding off in the not distant future...tomorrow, believe it or not, i'm going to work...i have yet to submit the term's grades, and i have a japanese lesson at my office in the afternoon...and then, i'm really (maybe) on vacation for a little while...