The Japanese food every foreigner would first think of might be "sushi". And I also think it is one of the most popular dishes in Japan. But how many times do we Japanese go to a sushi bar? Of course it depends on each individual, but one would go to a good sushi bar at most a few times a month.
So most Japanese people end up going to a revolving sushi bar(kaiten-zushi) to save money. There are some sushi-go-round restaurants whose one dish costs as much as about 5 us dollars, but amid this recession people prefer to go to one which serves 1 dollar-a-dish sushi. And this one I visited the other day had the same payment structure as the latter.
You can have as many sushi as you like and should pay money when you leave the restaurant. So people have sushi while counting the number of the dishes. Sounds stingy?