Short but memorable post: Sushi Dai, the most poplular sushiya at the Tsukiji Fish Markets.
On our last day in Japan, my brother and I may have possibly made a bad decision to attempt to visit Sushi Dai at 8AM in the morning, because we ended up queueing for four hours! The queue was long enough that my brother was able to buy a suitcase, pack the final bits of stuff for our departure, and check out of the hotel. I can’t believe that people would line up for a single sushi store like this, but once you get in, it’s amazing and you forget how long you’ve spent in line. The chefs are super cheery, friendly and polite. We also got there just when a new giant scallop was being opened which was quite the sight! What a delicious set of sushi, some similar, and some different from Daiwa sushi (the place next door that costs about 1000yen less and the wait time is about half as long). I loved the sanma and chose scallop as my sushi of choice, and here I also got asked what level of wasabi I preferred, which saved me from wasabi shock. I was very impressed.
What I love about having sushi in Japan is all the different types of seafood – there’s pretty much no salmon and the tuna here is the best you can get. My favourite, however, was the sanma (sauri pike, pictured right of the sea urchin). I love it so much but it’s near impossible to get in Sydney. I also now love sea urchin as a result of how good it tastes here, and got my scallop fix.
If going here, I’d definitely recommend queueing as early as possible; it’s totally worth a two hour wait, but four hours is definitely a stretch!