This is the 4th posting on a Kaitenzushi restaurant. We're now in recession. I repeated this phrase over and over again, but Japan still lags behind many developed or developing countries when it comes to economic recovery. The Nikkei Stock Average dipped below 10,000 yen recently partly because of the deteriorating economies in the EU, and because our consumers refrain from buying things, and it caused the companies across the nation not to profit from domestic consumption. Okay, I don't want to talk about economic problems here, but the reason why I referred to that is because I wanted to explain why people still go to a Kaitenzushi where they can have one-dish-a-dollar sushi.
I told you before our neighboring city has Kappa as the symbol, and in fact this restaurant was in the city, but these Kappa characters have nothing to do with it.
In my book, this Kaitenzushi restaurant really differs from the others in that almost everything this restaurant offers is for kids. The green things are stuffed Kappa toys as you can see.
Kids would be pleased to see this. When you order sushi on the touch panel screen, the chefs put the sushi on this bullet train and it stops just in front of your table. Isn't this funny?
We never have a "fried" shrimp as sushi, but we can have it here. I don't know about foreign kids, but Japanese kids like fried things such as fried chicken.
I introduced a Japanese specialty "Takoyaki" last year, but this "sushi" restaurant does serve it. Each ball has a piece of octopus, and sauce and dried bonito on top of it.
Kids like to put mayonnaise on top of everything. And this sushi has tiny pieces of shrimp and vegetables with mayonnaise. Sushi wrapped by seaweed like these are called "Gunkan", or battleship.
But you can have ordinary sushi as well. The two sushi nearside are "Uni (left)" and "salmon (right). Uni means sea urchin as some of you already know.
It was reported a little while ago that this Kappa sushi is the most profitable of all Kaitenzushi chains. But why can this kind of Kaitenzushi profit despite each sushi is only one dollar? According to an article I read, such a sushi restaurant can cut back on the personnel cost easily 'cause while your are eating you don't have to talk to the waiters, but you just take sushi dishes off the conveyor or touch the screen to order.
