If our first meal in Japan was eaten shortly after arrival in the airport itself (at Hanayama Udon), we didn’t go so very far for our second meal either. Well, that’s both true and not true. It’s true that our dinner was located only about 100 feet from our apartment’s door in Morishita (a residential neighbourhood in Koto City); but we only arrived there after having walked a long distance in the heat and humidity. You see, our original plan had been to eat at Hinai Stand, a well-regarded yakitori restaurant in Monzen Nakacho/Mon Naka, about a 25 minute walk from us. But on arrival we were disabused of the notion that we could just walk in without a reservation. (Why didn’t we have a reservation? As at many restaurants in Japan, you can only make one on the phone and you need to be a Japanese speaker for that. There are services you can use to get around that but we didn’t bother with all that on this trip.) We made a reservation on the spot for the next day (Google Translate is a lifesaver in Japan) and walked back to our neighbourhood sushi spot: Yayoi Sushi. Here’s how it went.

Despite being located in a non-touristy and barely-touristed part of Tokyo, Yayoi Sushi has an English language menu for non-Japanese speakers. The brief history of the restaurant in the menu informs that they’ve been around since 1950 and that the chef/owner is committed to Edomae sushi of the old school. The restaurant itself—like most restaurants in Tokyo—is very small. It has two tatami tables for four where you’re seated on the floor and about eight seats at the counter. When we arrived the counter was mostly occupied and we were directed to one of the tatami tables. We managed to contort our inflexible bodies to sit down and peruse the menu and order but it was not shaping up to be the most comfortable experience. Thankfully, by the time my beer came out, enough seats had opened up at the counter and they kindly let us move there. It’s a high counter so you can’t really have much of a view of the chef at work but I do always enjoy sitting at the counter in a sushi restaurant.

The menu comprises a number of nigiri sushi and chirashi sets in different price tiers along with some a la carte options. You can get nigiri by the piece, you can order rolls as well as tempura and grilled fish and so on. We decided to stick with raw fish. We were not terribly hungry—on account of our late udon/tempura lunch—and so got three sets between the four of us. The boys and the missus shared the regular chirashi and the regular nigiri sets and I got the “super deluxe” nigiri set. Both sets featured eight pieces of nigiri and rolls; it’s just the composition that was different. The regular nigiri set included kanpachi, two pieces of akami/lean bluefin tuna, ika/squid, tamago/egg cake, kohada/gizzard shad, tako/octopus, anago/conger eel, plus 6 pieces of cucumber roll. The regular chirashi included mostly the same over a bed of rice. The “super deluxe” nigiri set included suzuki/rosy seabass, two pieces of chutoro/medium-fatty tuna belly, akagai/arkshell clam, ebi/shrimp, uni/sea urchin roe, ikura/salmon roe and anago—plus 6 pieces of tuna roll. Oh, and all three sets came with very good miso soup with lots of little clams.

The fish was all uniformly very good and the pieces were not tiny; the rice was nothing out of the ordinary. On the whole, this was not as far away in quality from better neighbourhood sushi restaurants in Los Angeles (like Nozomi) as you might expect. The big difference is price. At Nozomi, the sushi deluxe lunch combo of 8 pieces plus tuna roll cost $65 at our last visit in December 2022 (it’s doubtless more expensive now). And that’s without uni, which would have been a $12 add-on (or for that matter, kohada in the regular sushi combo). Here, the entire meal plus a large bottle of beer cost $56 all-in (the prices are tax-inclusive and Japan is not a tipping culture). So, it’s not just neighbourhood sushi but truly neighbourhood prices.

For a closer look at the menu, the restaurant and what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see what’s coming next from Tokyo.

I would not suggest that anyone visiting Tokyo go out to Morishita to eat at Yayoi Sushi. Sushi of this quality and even better (for not very much more money) can be found all over the city. But if, like us, you happen to be staying within very easy reach, then by all means.

This was the first of many sushi meals on our trip. If you can believe it, we ate sushi on of eight of the ten days we were in Japan. Indeed, our very next meal also featured sushi—that was for breakfast at Toyosu Fish Market the next morning. I’ll have a report on that over the weekend.