I am trying to locate a conveyor belt sushi restaurant in Sapporo, preferably in the vicinity of the Keio Plaza Hotel where my group will be staying. I found this website that lists three of them in Sapporo, but the map links are in Japanese. Can anyone assist me with figuring out where they are in relation to the hotel?
Keio Plaza Hotel
2-1 North5 West7,Chuou-ku,Sapporo

Link to three conveyor belt restaurants - top three restaurants are conveyor belt style.
http://www.bfh.jp/en/theme/theme_search/12/103/14/238/

The Keio is in the NW part of the city and I think from Alta Vista translation http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ your restaurant is in the East part of the city. I remember your area of Sapporo but don't remember any sushi restaurants near your hotel but did not walk all around your area. I know there are a bunch of them down by the Tanukikoji shopping dori. Here is a map for you:

http://www.infomapjapan.com/images/m...ro_map_web.pdf

hopefully the Japanese readers will come along and translate your page for you

Aloha!

Keio Plaza Hotel is 5 min walk from JR Sapporo station and the nearest kaiten zushi restaurant on your website is Nemuro Hanamaru located within Station Building. It's apparently popular, so expect a long wait (no reservation taken).

I tried Nemuro Hanamaru, it's the best conveyor belt sushi I have in Japan! Have a look on my blog to see the beautiful sushi pictures. I really miss it! http://www.loveisaroundtheworld.com/...-hanamaru.html

Sorry cheeseforever, but you probably haven't been to many kaiten sushi in Japan, because this is actually the worst one I've tried... People make long queues there only because it's cheap. Fish is tasteless and it's not worth waiting for. There are lots of good kaiten in Japan and I'm trying to discover a good one in Sapporo...

Ok, this begs the question what are the best kaiten sushi restaurants in Japan? As well as Sapporo...
We went to the famous Maguro Bito in Asakusa and after long queue wait found it ok. But the one around the corner in the main street was much better!

Is Kappa Zushi a chain throughout Japan, or just in Kyoto area? I was taken there a couple nights ago and found it amazing -- perfectly prepared VERY fresh. The gimmick is not only a conveyor belt, but also a touch screen at your spot at the counter or at your booth and your special order is delivered to your spot on an upper track by miniature bullet train! But here's the most amazing part of all -- all dishes were just 105 yen.

I may not be a sushi expert, but my Kyoto friend is, and he raves about this place, which is why he took me there.

Sushi lives or dies with quality of ingredients (tane in Japanese). To sell sushi at 105 yen a piece (pair), you must use cheap source of fish, almost always frozen imported stuff, sometimes a substitute, while in specialist sushi restaurants, fish is always fresh, and almost certain to have been caught inshore.
Kaiten zushi at 105 yen a piece may still be tasty comparable to what you get in many sushi bars abroad, but is very different from what you get in a specialist restaurant with top quality ingredients (including the quality of rice and dried seaweed - nori), techniques and presentation.

Kappa zushi is a national chain, with HQ in Saitama near Tokyo, running some 350 restaurants all over Japan (exc Hokkaido and Shikoku).

According to my friend (yes, he could be wrong, but I don't think so) the fish for the sushi at Kappa is bought from the very same purveyors as some of the very expensive sushi houses. It's a pretty simple fact of business. A business feeding thousands of people per day at some 350 outlets with a very quick turnover can sell the same product at a tiny fraction of a price that an individual place does that serves maybe a couple hundred enjoying slow dining. And there are many other factors in their overhead besides simply the fish itself. Trust me, this sushi had not been frozen, that much I can certainly tell. I won't deny that it wasn't served on $100 plates -- so if that's important to your enjoyment of sushi (and I know it is to some people) then yes, stay away from Kappa. And no they don't serve some of the very exotic forms of sushi. It's not for sushi snobs in other words, but just for those who appreciate good quality without all the "extras".

Almost all sushi-grade fish is flash-frozen when it's caught. I would be stunned if NeoPatrick could tell whether the sushi he ate had been frozen.

(I don't doubt that NewPatrick enjoyed his 105Y sushi. But he might reserve his comments about sushi "snobbery" until he demonstrates that his palate and aesthetic have a sufficient level of sophistication to appreciate the complexities that are an essential element of great sushi.)

I have eaten regularly at $200-a-head sushi restaurants in Tokyo as well as kaiten zushi places, so I know what I'm talking about. While 105 yen plate of sushi is good in itself, and I enjoy it when feeling peckish out shopping or sightseeing, there is a place for gourmet sushi and I don't regret spending serious money if it warrants it. It's one of the most sublime culinary experiences, in the same league as three-star Michelin French gourmet palaces. If you go to 'Kappa Zushi' website (in Japanese only), they have a list of ingredients and their origin, and most popular lines are from all over the world, frozen and defrosted, not caught in Japanese waters, packed in ice and airlifted to restaurants the same day. When speaking to a sushi chef at a high-end place, he could tell me where his fish and seafood came from, down to the name of the village where it was caught.

I always thought that <b>sushi</b> meant the rice that is topped or filled with <b>sashimi</b> or other ingredients......

I always enjoy a fresh report from Japan no matter where or how the reporter eats.

Would be nice to read how a newbie to Japan sees and eats for the first time without the well intended corrections for after all it is his experience.....

Aloha!

I think some of you took my "sushi snobbery" comment the wrong way. It is not meant to be a derogatory term and I thought I explained that the fine points of sushi eating are important to some. I myself proudly call myself a theatre snob all the time, and I don't think that's a bad thing either. I'd compare it to "tea snobbery" -- again nothing wrong with that. But to suggest that someone who enjoys paying 5000 yen to sit in a nice little tea house with all the formality of a costumed hostess pouring and serving can't get the same "cup of tea" for much less somewhere without insisting that tea would have to be inferior because the tea itself is cheaper is only deluding himself. Now try to read and believe what I'm saying. In my book there is NOTHING WRONG with paying more for something when you enjoy all the bells and whistles, but don't assume because a huge business can buy in volume, serve in volume, and drop all the expensive "fanciness" that it automatically means the mean ingredient is somehow inferior. Get it? Ever hear of costco? Ever hear of "volume buying" or "volume merchandising"? That's all I was saying. I fully understand that sitting in a Kappa Zushi stuffing yourself with GOOD sushi, is NOTHING like the total experience of going to fine sushi chef and taking a bite of pure heaven. But I also don't believe that because a business takes a different approach in mass marketing, it automatically means their product is crap. That's all.

By the way, wasn't the original question of this thread all about conveyor belt sushi?

I agree with everything you say, NeoPatrick. There is a place for both fast-food sushi (that's what kaiten zushi really is) and gourmet heaven of a fine sushi restaurant. Just don't confuse the two, or say that the quality of sushi bears no relation to how much you pay. While 105 yen plate of sushi is a remarkable value in anyone's budget, anyone who loves sushi should experience a 1000 yen pair of toro sushi prepared by a fine chef just for you.

"Just don't confuse the two, or say that the quality of sushi bears no relation to how much you pay."

I wouldn't say that and I didn't. What I did say was much of the fish comes from the same sources as the expensive places get it, and also that it was "perfectly prepared and fresh". By the way, I once experienced "Nobu" in NYC and spent a small fortune. The "event" was sort of memorable, but the experience was lost on me. I'm just not a fan of many of the more exotic things, and really don't like fish roe of almost any type (yes, I nearly gagged on Beluga caviar once, too). Give me really fresh tuna or yellowtail or salmon or scallop on plain sushi and I almost prefer it.
Sorry, but there's no way I'll ever be a sushi snob or expert.

What you had at Kappa Zushi was almost certainly frozen fish defrosted. While it's 'fresh' in a sense, it's not the same stuff served at my favourite sushi restaurant in Ningyocho, Tokyo, where everything they serve is packed in ice from the moment it was caught and air- or land-transported straight to the chef's table. What makes you say that Kappa Zush's ingredients come from the same sources as expensive places? As I've said, if you look at their home page, they list where their ingredients come from, and most are from far-away oceans, deep frozen and defrosted before serving. My place would never use frozen seafood.

Probably the only thing more obnoxious than someone who pretends to be an expert on something he doesn't know about -- is a person who rants his superiority over a person who has admitted over and over again that he's not an expert on something. I guess it makes him feel good to keep saying "my place is superior" and "I know more than you do". If you'll read back you'll find that there is only one of us here speaking in "definites".

Alec, you know infinitely more about sushi than I do. I admit it and I don't care. Now are you happy?

I'm just putting over the facts, to save others from getting the wrong ideas!