Sushiro スシロ, Minami-Funabashi, Chiba; Throughout Japan

We have this bad habit of letting the little ones pick out where we eat on the weekends.  It usually starts out with one of us asking them where they want to eat for dinner or for lunch.  Then they tell us where.  About half of the times the kids want to eat at kaiten sushi places, which for American people means conveyer belt sushi.  I have an older post for Kura Sushi, which is a kaiten sushi joint.  Well this week, they predictably picked kaiten sushi.  However, it was not any kaiten sushi place, but it was Kura Sushi. Kura Sushi is incredibly popular with kids because they have a game whereby for each five plates of sushi you buy, you get to play a game at your table.  If you win the game (which is random), you win a capsule prize.  So we headed out to the closest Kura sushi at that mega mall, La La Port in Funabashi.   After changing the train twice, it took about 35 minutes to get there.  It's not actually that far from us, but if you miss the right train, you can end up waiting 15 minutes or so for another train. If you are wondering by now why the post is entitled "Sushiro" and not "Kura Sushi," let me explain.

Salmon, yum-oh!

Well we arrived at La La Port at 3ish and went up to Kura Sushi to scout out wait times.  To our dismay, at 3pm, the expected seating time was 7:40pm.  That's over 4 and half hours to wait for a table.  That's nuts.  To add insult to injury, they had this sign in the window at Kura Sushi:

When I see ignorance like this it drives me nuts.  This is not uncommon in this country.  My cousin Ryan couldn't believe it when he came here the first time.  The third largest economy and supposedly most technologically advanced country in the world with talking bus signs and robotic toilet seats has large chains that don't accept credit cards.  Ouch.   It's really just bad from a business perspective.  So fair warning to all of you planning on coming here, have cash on hand as credit cards are not accepted at many places.

Back to our family, there was no way we would wait over four and a half hours to eat dinner, so we hightailed out of there.  We did a little shopping and about 15 minutes from Kura Sushi, we found Sushiro.  We did have to wait about half and hour, but the sushi was very good.  Let me share some pics.

What's missing here is a video of the sushi actually rotating around.  Chefs in the back prepare the sushi, put them on plates and put them on the line.

 If you don't see what you want, you can manually order things.  You can pick English on the menu and it toggles to an English menu.

When you order things, music plays on the screen to let you know your order is coming your way, and your order comes on a dish specifically colored for your table. We were the silver table, and the special order dishes had a silver sticker on them.

A convenient menu on the table.

Snow crab!

Young (cooked) chicken

Unagi (eel)

Cooked thin slices of beef

My favorite, deep fried imitation crab with mayonnaise.  Damn that was good.

What goes great with sushi? Suntory Premium Malts!

You can order noodles too.  They also have fries, fried foods and desserts on the menu

 Burp...

One thing about kaiten sushi chains like Sushiro and Kura Sushi is that they are very affordable.  Each plate only costs about 1 dollar (100 yen).  I was able to feed a family of four for around 40 bucks (4,300 yen), which is not bad at all.  If you hike out to kaiten sushi chains in the U.S. like Sushi Station, you end up paying 3-4 dollars a plate.  So, if you want affordable sushi, hop on a flight to Japan and hit Sushiro. 

Overall, I give Sushiro five unagi rolls out of five unagi rolls for a great selection, affordability and well, everything tasted really good.