The japanese yen conversion rate right now is awesome if you’re American. What would be a night out at the best sushi restaurant in town (Takara Sushi in Misawa) for 2 people in America would be at least $120. Here? Only $40!

Getting the reservation was a bit tricky. For such a futuristic country, they are still stuck in the past. Reservations are made by telephone here and no one speaks English. With my very limited Japanese, I called. The guy on the other side of the line said a bunch of Japanese I didn’t understand. When he was done I said “two people, 7pm, all good?” in Japanese. My confidence was not too high when all I heard for a good 5-10 seconds afterwards was just silence. So I tried again.. “Sorry. Two people. 7pm. All good?” After another 5 seconds of excruciating silence I heard Google Translate in the background and the older gentleman on the phone responded in heavily accented English “today?”. Hai! Yes, today! I made the reservation! Note, I wanted the reservation to be 6:30 but didn’t know how to say that, so I settled to eat at 7 instead.

When you get in, there is an aquarium behind the sushi counter where they keep the live fish and shellfish they use to make sushi.

The sushi was really delicious and fresh. We ate so much and we were pretty full. I made sure to let the chef know his food was delicious. He must have liked that because he gave us a special dish extra, on the house. That dish? Shrimp. But not any shrimp. Shrimp freshly taken from the aquarium behind the counter, with the tail removed and the head still on. He put two of these in a cup and.. the legs and head antenna were still moving. The shrimp was so fresh, it was still alive…

Umm.. so now what the heck do we do? The chef gave another table with Americans the same thing, so we looked to them for guidance. The fact they were doing the same thing as us (mainly freaking out, taking pictures, and looking terribly confused) did not help at all. We furiously texted anyone who might know. Our friend Kyline suggested we ask the chef to grill it or put it in a hot soup. If I had the Japanese to ask, I still couldn’t because this was a raw sushi restaurant. Yikes. We found a guide online on how to eat it.

First, we waited as long as we possibly could until we were fairly sure it wasn’t moving anymore. Of note, we faced the shrimp toward the chef because they were staring at us, and it was emotionally very difficult for us. Not wanting to insult the chef, we followed the guide I found on Google and proceeded to eat the shrimp. It was okay, but not something I would order, I think. Not that I ordered it this time, either.