The other night it was time to celebrate my daughter’s birthday, so we all got into the car and went out for sushi. While there are many options for sushi available, including one place I know where live fish swim around in a tank making it possible for you to choose which one you want to eat tonight, we opted for a simple kaiten-zushi or conveyor belt sushi restaurant. This popular alternative to a traditional-style sushi was invented in 1958 by an enterprising restaurant owner in Osaka who was having trouble staffing his restaurant, so he came up with a way for very few employees to serve many customers at once. According to research, a lot of the popularity of conveyor-belt sushi comes from the way the products scroll by from right to left, which creates a pleasant, almost hypnotic sensation in the brain. The companies work hard to create the best customer experiences — the chain we were at lets you order items with a touch panel, and another chain near us has a separate conveyor belt with a train that delivers your sushi right to you!
I love eating sushi in Japan.
