Two Weeks of Eating in Japan, Chapter 7.

Sushi was by far and away the greatest disappointment of the vacation. Before we went out, everyone said the same thing: “Eat sushi in Japan and you’ll never want to eat sushi again”. 

Whereas it’s both obvious and inevitable that Japan will – and can – offer the best sushi in the world, we didn’t find it. We casually searched for sushi restaurants throughout our two weeks, but all too often became wonderfully distracted by all the other food to try. More than once we were heading to a well-reviewed sushi restaurant before being drawn into a non-sushi restaurant that seemed to beckon us in with mouth-watering wax sculptures of the food it served.  I’ll not lie, there was also a sense of getting into places that had less of a queue; “If this good-looking restaurant can get us at a table in a few minutes, let’s do this rather walk to the sushi pace down the road where queue *might* be three times as long”.  It’s ridiculous reasoning, but we are who we are.

On the one occasion we made it to what looked like a nice sushi place, it wasn’t. Azuma Sushi was tucked off bustling Shijo-dori in Kyoto, two floors up an elevator (many Japanese restaurants are closeted away in an office building, where a street level elevator takes you up a few floors and awkward spits you out face first with the host desk), the restaurant was a solid 4.6 on Google.  Interestingly, by the time I have lethargically gotten round to posting this, the score has dropped to 4.2.

We found what was on offer to be tough and tasteless. The sashimi was fantastic, but the rolls were terrible and one particular eel option that came with the mixed sets we ordered was like eating shoe leather.

All was redeemed on our rainy daytrip to Nara, later in the vacation.  We had finished exploring Tōdai-ji when the heavens opened.  We ran to the first restaurant we could find and caught the end of the lunch service at Izasa-Nakatani-hompo Yumekaze-hiroba.  Here, we sat in the window, with tea and beer, eating Kakinoha Zushi, a dish local to Nara where sushi is wrapped in Persimmon leaves, a historic quirk that is said to keep out bacteria.  The rolls were soft, the rice was tasty and fish fresh and tender.  We ate them with bowls of warm broth, udon noodles and plates of tempura vegetables and prawns, all while the rain poured outside.  Afterwards, the weather dried up but remained overcast, affording us a wonderful crisp walk in a rapidly darkening forest, all the way up to the Meoto Daikokusha shrine.  It was one of those afternoons where perfect weather and a chance encounter with a great restaurant created one of the best moments of the vacation.

Overall, we fared better when sushi and sashimi were served as part of other meals. The sashimi with the kaiseki menus was wonderful, as were the pieces offered by hotel breakfast buffets. I could move to Japan just for the salmon sashimi. Sushi in the bento boxes on trains was also incredible, but that’s a surprising story for another day.