The Changing Face Of Sushi In Japan

[Mulboyne]

WSJ: A Master's Touch
...Being served by a sushi master is the ultimate bespoke food experience in Japan. But the practice is on the wane, undermined by a proliferation of sushi-chain restaurants -- including casual eateries where dishes are delivered on a conveyor belt -- that are pushing smaller restaurants, often family-owned, out of business. What's more, a growing reluctance among young Japanese to undergo the nearly 10 years of required training threatens the future supply of sushi masters. Most sushi chefs are men; women rarely enter the field partly because of the physical labor involved in procuring supplies from the fish market and partly because of a cultural stigma. According to the national union of sushi chefs in Japan, the number of chefs has dropped in step with the number of registered sushi restaurants in the country, which has fallen to 9,000 as of November 2009 from 10,000 in 2006. In 1992, there were 20,000. Today's aspiring sushi chefs "want to skip the hard part and start making sushi pieces right away. But it doesn't work that way, because a sushi chef is not just a chef," says Tadashi Yamagata, 61, the fourth-generation owner of Miyakozushi restaurant in Tokyo's Nihonbashi area, who also heads Japan's sushi-chef union...Ironically, the more popular sushi has grown, the less popular the profession has become. "Sadly, I don't think many kids today know the difference in taste between mass-produced sushi and sushi served at traditional sushi restaurants," says Mr. Hibino, the food culture professor...more...

[AssKissinger]

undermined by a proliferation of sushi-chain restaurants

Maybe people like a friendly reasonably priced place over that snobby bullshit.

[xenomorph42]

Originally Posted by AssKissinger

Maybe people like a friendly reasonably priced place over that snobby bullshit.

10 years to be a master Sushi chef??? Forget it! No wonder the number of chefs are declining. Who'd wanna go through all that?

[omae mona]

Originally Posted by xenomorph42

10 years to be a master Sushi chef??? Forget it! No wonder the number of chefs are declining. Who'd wanna go through all that?

Maybe somebody who wants to work their way up to grossing 500,000-600,000 yen per day like the chef in the article, rather than working part-time jobs in konbini? Sheesh, that doesn't sound too terrible to me.

[sublight]

I don't know about the top end places, but the middle-of-the-road sushi restaurants just don't seem worth it. I had dinner the other night at one of the Sushi ZenMai shops in the middle of the Tsukiji market, and while the salmon and crab were good, the other fish had no flavor, and the scallops were completely overwhelmed with wasabi. 2,000 yen, and I stopped at McDonald's on the way home for a fillet-o-fish because I was still hungry.

I could have gone to the discount kaiten sushi shop near my home and had just as good a meal for less than half the price.

Still, I blame myself for going to place like Zenmai, when there were at least a dozen tiny little shops in the back alleys that were open for business and probably would have been better. That late at night, Zenmai was the only one with anything out front indicating they were open.