Posts Tagged ‘sushi’

Bride and groom cut tuna instead of wedding cake

Who needs a wedding cake when you’ve got a bigass tuna to cut instead:

A company in Kanagawa prefecture has offered tuna-cutting marriage ceremonies for about 10 years now. This particular couple has purchased a 100kg BigEye tuna for their guests. They don’t reveal the cost of this particular fish, but they do say that minimum plan costs about 3,000 yen X 50 guests (150,000 yen).

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Hugh Jackman eats sushi (again)

A day after NTV aired its show about taking Hugh Jackman to Tsukiji so he could enjoy sushi, FTV’s “Mezamashi TV” morning show aired its own Hugh Jackman interview segment. They had also heard about Hugh’s love of sushi, so they also took him to Tsukiji:

Incorrectly assuming that Australia and the United States lack conveyor belt sushi restaurants, they took him to a kaiten sushi place. It wasn’t as impressive as his experience with NTV, but he was still acted excited and was very nice and polite to everyone.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

High tech conveyor belt sushi

A look at some of the high tech tricks being used by one conveyor belt sushi restaurant chain:

• Used plates are put into a slot, tallying the price of what you ate and sending the dish back for cleaning. For every 5 plates eaten, a little slot machine game is played. Kids love winning prizes.
• Each plate has an IC chip. When a plate has been going around the conveyor belt for too long, it is automatically classified as old sushi and dumped.
• When there are only a few customers at the restaurant, the length of the conveyor belt can be adjusted.
• A computer system keeps track of how many customers enter the restaurant, and it calculates the amount of sushi that chefs must make at any given time.
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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

DNA testing finds sushi mislabled as more expensive fish

Some DNA testing of fish from various sources in America, including sushi restaurants, has found that consumers may not be getting the fish they’re paying for:

The results showed that 25 percent of the girls’ samples were mislabeled: half of the restaurant samples and six out of 10 grocery store samples.

In every case, less desirable or cheaper fish was substituted for its more expensive counterpart, Stoeckle said. She and her father would not divulge the names of vendors, citing a fear of lawsuits.

“It’s not the fishermen, and it might not even be the restaurants,” she said. “Most likely, the mislabeling is occurring somewhere at the distribution level.”

For example, fish sold as white tuna turned out to be cheaper Mozambique tilapia, flying roe fish was replaced with smelt, and red snapper was mislabeled as Atlantic cod and Acadian redfish, an endangered species.

I’ve seen a few investigative reports on Japanese TV about restaurants deliberately mislabeling fish, but I don’t recall the use of DNA testing in those investigations. It would be interesting to see more DNA testing similar to the study done in America, only on a larger scale.

Sushi Delivery

A funny commercial showing why customers choose Gin no Sara delivery sushi over sushi from a high class restaurant:

[via Zaeega]

Sushi Plate Strongman Challenge

Yet another amusing comedy video clip! The buggy team of Haneru no Tobira comedians attempt to carry as many plastic sushi plates as possible:

[ The giant garlic heart that the spider lady bites into at the beginning of the clip reminds us that Valentine's Day is next week and that she will be delivering putrid breath to the faces of those who fail at the sushi plate carrying. ]