Chasing Mercury Poisoning – 13 Sushiyas in 18 Days

My wife loves sushi but has abstained from raw seafood for 3.5 years due to two pregnancies & other health choices. She recently decided to reintroduce raw seafood to her diet, so we went to Japan for the first time to indulge.

While we’ve had plenty of sushi in London / New York / other metropolitan areas, sushi in Japan was really another level of enjoyable. We were surprised by the differences in each omakase experience – each chef has his own style and there was creativity at each restaurant despite all being very “traditional”.

We are not Japanese and made the bookings through Omakase / Tableall over the last two months.

Restaurants:

1) Akira

2) Amamoto

3) Arai (reservation confirmation said no photos but some diners were taking photos and the chef seemed fine with it)

4) Harutaka

5) Inomata

6) Kimura

7) Sawada (explicitly no photos or phone)

8) Shunsuke

9) Sugaya

10) Sugita

11) Suzuki

12) Takeru

13) Yoshitake (explicitly no photos)

Neither of us are super familiar with the reputations of each place, but my wife’s vote for her favorite was Kimura. My favorite meal was Sugita. Most westerner friendly in my opinion was Yoshitake.

I’m sure regularly available photos online are far nicer than mine, but here are some of my botched ones for fun. We are here for a few more days and will enjoy non-sushi food for the rest of our trip. We both can’t wait to go back for sushi during a different season 😊