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The tap that pours hot water, not cold
On where a sushi self-service system quietly puts its risk
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One of my favorite things to watch, whenever I’m back in mainland Japan, is a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant — kaiten-zushi.
Partly that’s because the self-service machinery is impressive on its own terms. But what keeps pulling me back, more strongly, is the other reason: the system never seems to stop evolving. Between the kaiten-zushi I first walked into almost thirty years ago and the one I visited last month, maybe the only things that haven’t changed are that a lane still runs sushi around the room, and a handful of other small fixtures.
Ordering is on a touch panel now. (When I was a kid, ordering happened over an intercom to the kitchen — you told the staff your seat number and what you wanted, out loud.) Plates no longer just circle the room forever — more often now, a dedicated lane delivers your order straight to your seat. Feed your empty plates into a slot in the table and it tallies your bill automatically.
I moved to a small island about ten years ago, one with no kaiten-zushi at all. So every time I go home and step into one, I notice something has shifted since the last visit — like checking in on a piece of software that keeps shipping updates while you weren’t looking.
