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Feb 1, 2016

Pro Sushi Cheap, Eating at Sushi Academy

Pro Sushi Cheap, Eating at Sushi Academy photo

Last spring I remember watching the news and I saw President Obama eating Sushi with the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe. I remember saying, 


“Wow, thats my president, and thats the guy who is in charge of the country I’m living in.”

 

They weren’t eating just any old sushi, they were eating the most prestigious, most expensive, and highest quality sushi in Japan, Sukiyabashi Jiro Sushi.


I wanted to go, I looked it up, I watched the documentary, and I found out that the shop wasn’t even that far from me. But then I saw the price tag.


You can spend up to 30,000 yen, roughly 300 american dollars, for one sitting at this restaurant. You don’t even pick your own sushi. You have to trust Jiro with the exact order you eat everything for the best experience possible. It could be a great experience, maybe the most mind blowing food experience in the world, but I’m American yo, I need options and a deal, I need to feel like I played the system and got the best out of something.


So where do guys like this, come from? Well, there is the sushi academy in Kagurazaka, the French Quarter in Tokyo, which is a cool little day trip in itself. 


People all around the world come here to learn about sushi, living and learning here for up to a year to get the course certificate and bring it back to their restaurant, whether it be in Tokyo, New York, or London. These guys come from all over the world so they can have legitimate sushi added to their menu at their 5 star restaurant.


The cool thing about this place is, 


These chefs, they need experience. 

And to get experience, they gotta make sushi.

To order. 

Who's going to order sushi at this school?

You.

You can reserve a seat at this place, and you can try 50 different sushi and 20 different dishes, all you can eat, for about 3,000円. That's 10% of a Jiro Sushi Dinner.

Pro Sushi Cheap, Eating at Sushi Academy photo

This might not be Jiro level sushi, but maybe, just maybe, somebody might be working there will become Jiro level, someday, probably far into the future. Then you can say that you ate that guy's sushi, when he was a student at the Tokyo Sushi Academy.


I figured that in this city, the cost is most efficient for this quality of sushi. In other words, the city-cost ratio in this situation is at its most desirable.

Yea?



Yea?




But you can judge for yourself by calling and reserving a seat at this place, or you can watch my video and see what your mouth wants.


In the words of my lovely companion:


“Taste, same, looks, not sure…” 


Address: 〒162-0825 Tokyo, Shinjuku, 神楽坂3丁目6-3

Phone: 03-6265-0047



JanglishJerry

JanglishJerry

Be sure to check me out on YouTube: Janglish Jerry

I go around and find the weirdest, coolest, strangest, most interesting things in my area. I frequent Tokyo, Yokohama, and Yokosuka.


4 Comments

  • KevinC

    on Feb 2

    Yeah, I hear that place a long time ago but never got the chance to go there, now I really want to go there.

  • JanglishJerry

    on Feb 2

    @KevinC These guys really try and impress you. Way more than I expected.

  • tvik

    on Sep 1

    I attended the program at the Tokyo Sushi Academy in 2016 and it is a total waste of time and money. They teach you how to pass their unrecognized, worthless certification test for $10,000+. You waste most of your time leaning to cut daikon radish, taking useless speed tests you have not had enough time to practice, and waiting around doing nothing. They do not teach you more than making rice & forming nigiri. They don't teach you about fish quality and freshness and you don't get that much practice breaking down whole fish as they promise. You do spend time cleaning their kitchen and grease traps. If you take the English version of the class don't count on the translators, only 1 out of 3 of them actually translated what the Japanese speaking only teachers were saying. It is a total ripoff. you have been warned. I paid $10,000 for the 2 month sushi class at the Tokyo Sushi Academy. The class is not geared towards teaching you about sushi. It is geared towards passing their sushi certification test. Their certification is contrived of some arbitrary speed tests, not really recognized by their own admission even in Tokyo. They say you will break down whole fish every day. Not true. Most days fish was already fillets and taken out of plastic vacuum packed packages. The fish you concentrate on for half the class and the certification test is a horse mackerel that is ONLY popular in Tokyo, not even in other parts of Japan. The main focus is not even on the most popular way to prepare it. They test you on making 18 pieces of nigiri sushi in 3 minutes. They wastes weeks on this. You practice 3 rounds of this test for weeks. You make the nigiri for 3 minutes then spend an hour waiting for the teacher to go around and check everyone's work. Then you clean up, including their grease traps and you are done for the day. They start testing you by the 2nd or 3rd week, not even enough time to acquire real technique before testing for speed. Only one of the 3 translators actually tried to translate completely. We we lucky if the other translators even translated 20% of what the instructors was saying. Often they would skip translating anything at all especially when the 2 Japanese students had conversations with the instructors 100% in Japanese in front of the rest of the class during our class time. Don't know why they were even there. They don't teach anything about the different tyes of fish, their flavors, what to pair them with and absolutely nothing about how to tell quality and freshness of the fish. This school is a TOTAL waste of TIME and MONEY. Avoid it. You can learn more from youtube.

  • JanglishJerry

    on Sep 2

    @tvik Wow. Maybe if the translators were better or you knew a little more Japanese, the school would have been better, but from your experience, it sounds like the school was a scam to get free labor for the restaurant. I'm sorry to hear that. I hope the certificate helped you out at least a little bit.