00:02 John Daub: Greetings, everybody. Hello and welcome to Tokyo. This episode is all about the director's cut, literally cut, of sushi right here. This is a normal size of sushi represented here in my lunch box, which I'm going to be eating together with you. So if you have sushi, you might want to go and get it out of the refrigerator or start cutting your own. We're going to have a little bit of fun today explaining about this episode, which is kind of a unique thing.

00:30 John Daub: I've been wanting to do this episode for about three or four years, and I knew about this chef for a very long time, but never met him until about two, three months ago when I walked into his shop and started to talk to him about his sushi. He's one of the most creative chefs, Chef Sugeta-san, Yuki Sugeta. He's won many awards for his creativity. He was a TV champion on a TV show a while ago. And you can see that on his website on the home page for his shop.

01:06 John Daub: But it's that kind of thinking, that kind of creativity that led to this, and which is the most misunderstood thing on the main channel. Everyone is going, it's a waste of money. Not everybody, but there's a lot of people going, it's a waste of money. This is just kind of dumb. Is it though? Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but that doesn't make it dumb at all. Number one, the reason why micro sushi is really cool. It's a way for the sushi chef to practice his or her skills to a very minute level. If you can make a model ship inside of a bottle, you probably have the patience to do just about anything. This requires a lot of skill in order to make it look almost similar to it. It's pretty crazy.

01:51 John Daub: Number two, customer satisfaction is the most important thing to chefs like Sugeta-san, to all successful chefs. You want the customer to be very happy with your work. If mothers are bringing in their children and they're crying and they don't want to eat, that's not only disturbing the other customers, that's not going to make a happy mother or happy customer right in front of you. So that's why 30 years ago, Sugeta-san came up with this idea. It's not as a menu entree, but as a way to entertain the other customers in the shop. I thought it was a great idea. I mean when I heard that, that's not what I thought it was at all. I literally thought like a lot of the people commenting on the main channel video that the sushi that was being sold was on the menu and it had a value and maybe it was like 2000 yen for something ridiculous.

02:47 John Daub: What I left with from Takasago Sushi was a really nice story of a very kind and generous chef who creates for the customer not just for himself, but for himself and he finds ways to innovate and think up new ideas. In fact he's got so many ideas it might even be worth going back to Takasago Sushi to introduce some of the other amazing creations. This is a reason why I love sushi in Tokyo but there's a reason why I don't like it and that's the reason why I don't like sushi is because a lot of the sushi chefs are too traditional. They're too much into, this is the way to do it. Like the only way to get a good margherita pizza is to get the cheese from a special dairy farm in Napoli. You can't get it fresh outside of Napoli, so that means you can only get fresh pizza in Napoli. Ridiculous. California sushi is an actual type of sushi, I think. People, millions of people eat it and enjoy it. Traditionalists won't make it in their shop in Tokyo. You can't find it anywhere. So you can find it at Sugeta-san's Takasago Sushi and I thought that was really cool.

04:03 John Daub: That makes him down to earth and he kind of gets it. Sushi originally was a street food. Sushi originally was meant to be cooked or made very quickly to serve impatient customers in the city of Tokyo. That's why it's called Edo sushi. Edo being the original name of Tokyo when it was a capital before the Meiji Restoration, before it became the city of Tokyo. And Sugeta-san gets that. He has that sort of down to earth feel that sushi is supposed to be fun. That's what I love about the conveyor belt kaiten-zushi (rotating sushi). It's supposed to be fun. And this is supermarket sushi that I have here for lunch. I'm going to open it up and show you as I talk about this.

04:45 John Daub: We're going to take a break and I'm going to show you some normal size sushi because even I don't want to look at micro sushi for too long because it just makes me too hungry. Like, if I watch this episode, I want to eat sushi. That's just sort of the way it is. But you just see from the picture, it's just like, why wouldn't I do this story? There's got to be something behind this. And that's why I chose this story. I don't want to go to McDonald's Japan or do Kit Kats and all this stuff all the time. I want to find stories like this that make you go, hmm, why? Really? And then introduce the reasoning why. And maybe this isn't going to be popular with the internet. But this is the direction I think Only in Japan is going to be going.

05:25 John Daub: So what I'm going to be doing is showing you some of the video footage and then going back and forth between this and my comments. So you get an idea of what's happening in this video. And then we're going to eat some sushi. All right, let's get this started here. That's me and Peter von Gomm. Shout out to the master. Welcome to Tokyo. Sushi can be considered a national cuisine. There's many varieties. There's a high end and a low end. There's high tech and then there's supermarket sushi. All kinds of sushi. And the shop behind me is known for its originality. And it's known for its size as well. Or lack thereof.

06:17 John Daub: Do you like the color coordination, shirt and jacket? I thought it was nice. Nice enough to wear in this episode. Well, the Shinkansen here is going by really fast. The next stop is in Shinagawa and it doesn't start slowing down for another 500 meters. So if you do go to the shop, you're going to see Shinkansen whizzing by like every five, seven minutes. Welcome to Tokyo's Ota Ward in Shinagawa and Takasago Sushi. It's a family run restaurant that serves all kinds of sushi. It's one of the few places in the city where you can get something like a California roll. They're creative. The head chef is Yuki Sugeta and his apprentice, Ise Meguro.

06:51 John Daub: Sugeta-san has been making sushi for over 30 years and is acclaimed for his creativity. I started off with a regular piece of akami honmaguro (tuna) sushi. That's like the test. If the sushi chef can make a good piece of maguro, then that's going to be a good restaurant because it's one of the most popular items. Chef has to make a good piece of maguro. He's putting the sauce on top and makes it look so juicy. It's beautiful. Just one. Then I asked for micro sushi. Micro sushi is not on the menu. It's not charged for anything. Once again, the chef makes it.

07:35 John Daub: He started making it 30 years ago when he finished his training just to please customers and to get kids to fall in love with sushi. When you look at it, you do a double take like, is that really what I think it is? Yes! It's an exact copy of the sushi that your mother is eating. And kids, because it's ridiculous, will eat it. Not all of them. He told me some of the kids would keep crying, but the mothers always appreciated the gesture. So it was a win-win for everybody. It doesn't cost a lot of money to make this. And it doesn't require a lot of effort if you've done this a hundred times. It's almost like second nature.

08:09 John Daub: Now Meguro-san made this for us. He's the apprentice to Sugeta-san. Sugeta-san was upstairs when we were filming this. I think it was even better that Meguro-san made it because you can see that it is really not that easy. I think Meguro-san has been studying sushi for about five or six years now. So he's very, very good at what he does. But I think you have to go for a little bit longer in order to become a sushi chef. The apprenticeship in Japan is very long. That in itself might be an episode. Not anybody can make sushi. It's true. It requires a lot more work and a certain skill.

08:49 John Daub: It's an eight-piece nigiri sushi set. It's crazy. At first, he lays out the fish and tamago (egg). I'm zoomed in. It's very small. Really. Less than a millimeter thick. Hard to get focus on this one. Look at that little piece of egg. I mean, it costs nothing to make. Next, the rice. One rice grain is too big, so Meguro-san chops it up to make a smaller base. This shocked me the most, that he had to reconstitute the rice to make it smaller. He's having fun doing it. I love that. A piece of rice measuring to about a third of a grain. It's so small. The rice is placed with fine chopsticks on a wooden sushi geta tray (sushi serving board). This is when it started to look ridiculous. When the tray's too big.

09:55 John Daub: There were some comments in the main channel video that perhaps it would be pretty cool if they had a micro tray. I think so too. But let's go to reality now. He doesn't actually have this as an entree in the restaurant yet. I think if a lot of people start ordering this, if the internet starts to go to visit, if I was him, I might charge a little bit for this because then people are going to be ordering it all the time. His time has cost. My time, I like to think my time has cost. Your time has cost. When you sit there and wait in a waiting room. I think that the dentist or the doctor should give you a discount based on how much you've waited. If you've waited there for an hour, you should probably take 10% off of the bill. I mean that your time is money, right?

10:37 John Daub: So for this, I think it's something that he does just to entertain. And if everyone starts ordering it or asking for it, maybe he's going to put it on the menu. I don't know. I personally, I probably would. Not a lot of money, but it's interesting. The maguro. And you wouldn't be able to just order this. That'd be ridiculous. Cause then he would make no money. It would be like an appetizer, I guess. It's a plus one with a meal order. Maybe. Top shaped and balanced. Look at the scale. It requires a lot of concentration to not just balance it, but make it look good and presentable.

11:29 John Daub: There were a couple of times where I had to like, I cut this up of course, but it was not easy to do this, to balance it perfectly. Cause this is much smaller than you think that these chopsticks more like tweezers, more even sharper than tweezers. It's very, very, very minute. There's the salmon and the maguro and the tai (sea bream). There it is. Ah, that one looks good. The tamago is a little more complex. Tamago is supposed to be the easiest or the most simple because it's not actually fish. It's just egg, sweet egg and the sweet egg in itself, making it is not easy. You have to have a recipe. It has to be very good. And some sushi chefs protect their sweet egg recipe. It's not something they share with anybody.

12:20 John Daub: Although you could make it. You could probably find that recipe and start to adjust it yourself. Each chef has their own kind of secret recipe, but this, they've taken it to like another level. Look at that. It requires a micro roll of nori seaweed. And the seaweed is so small. The nori wrapped around very carefully to keep shape. It's easy to break that nori and then have to do it again. But once again. The micro ikura (salmon roe) looks to be the hardest. This is the hardest. The nori is wrapped around the micro rice ball. When balanced and shaped, one small tobiko egg is set on top. This was very hard. It's about half a millimeter in size. Smaller than ikura. Ikura is small, but this is ridiculous. Just getting one tobiko egg out of the container is complicated. Tobiko is crunchy by the way. By the way, a cucumber garnish on top. There's a lot of them on one, but one doesn't have too much flavor. But when you bite it in a gunkan sushi (battleship sushi) that's wrapped around, you bite into it, it's very crunchy.

13:03 John Daub: The chef makes sure the tray is clean and presentable. A mark of any good chef. Here is the full-scale version. And here is the micro sushi. This is just ridiculous. Oh, Mr. Potter, here we go. I never heard of micro sushi. Not a lot of people have. The Internet hasn't. Only in Japan never fails to teach me something new about Japan. Such an art. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I love the fact that food in Japan can be art and there's a lot of art lovers we have. I think maybe more sophisticated of an audience than some other YouTube channels. I like the fact that art is something that we can present on the Only in Japan channel and the Only in Japan Go channel and we can see that food is of course popular on the internet. This is art, this is food and for a lot of people this is like putting together the perfect episode.

14:05 John Daub: I don't know, once again this is not a meal. I wanted him to go even further. I thought maybe let's get some tako (octopus), some other things, let's take this to another level. Can we just fill this up with all these colors? I mean Kit Kat Japan usually will have like a row of colors like a rainbow. Say can we get more, can we just fill the tray and that would have been ridiculous because that's not what they do. That's what my warped brain thinks about. I said look this tray is too big, let's fill it but we didn't do that. I said let's keep it simple then all right the chef is like okay okay let's keep it simple okay. It actually looks alike just shrunken down to a fraction of this. It does look alike. This shot almost was the thumbnail believe it or not. I said this is just too cool but you can't make out that this is the sushi. I was going to put micro sushi across the screen here and you can see how small it is. The scale now becomes evident, size it could even be considered cute.

15:07 John Daub: Certainly no one would make a meal of it right, nobody does excuse me internet main channel commenters nobody makes a meal of this so it's not for ants maybe for hamsters ants this is bigger than an ant you'd have to cut it smaller for ant size hamster maybe. In fact if I had a hamster and I had the hamster eating the sushi this would be a 100 million view episode. I gotta ask the sushi chef if I can bring a hamster in huh hamsters eating sushi we'll break the internet! Hamster with his bum and he's turning around like this with a piece of sushi and his one little tooth like this. He's got the piece of sushi. That would break the internet, right? The hamster's on the sushi geta tray, turns around with his bum and the camera and goes like this. And he's got a piece of sushi between his two little teeth. That would be a hundred million views. Why didn't I think of this earlier? This is why I do Go. Just all the ideas start coming out.

16:05 John Daub: Makes you wonder why even such a thing exists. Wow. This is a really big contrast you can see between the normal size sushi and the micro sushi. And let's ask the chef why he came up with this idea and what's the deal with this sushi anyway? This is the answer. I don't know if some of the commenters got to this part. It's okay. There were a lot of children in this neighborhood. It's a residential area, it's not like in the center of Tokyo. So you have to prepare sushi that meets your clients, meets your customers, your base. This is something that I think he thought for his demographics would fit well, and he wasn't wrong.

17:15 John Daub: But if your image of sushi is like high-end sushi, then you have the wrong image of sushi. That's one kind of sushi. There's a hundred kinds of sushi and the way that Sugeta-san makes his sushi is probably the way that I prefer it. His shop's more fun. It's not quiet like this. You can laugh, you can talk, there's more interaction with the customers and it's not overly priced. You know, I think it was a very reasonably priced sushi. The mothers always appreciated it. So he likes to give it to the ladies.

17:58 John Daub: So I asked Meguro-san, he says, would you explain to the camera what the sushi is? Now, Meguro-san is a little bit younger. When you see sushi chefs they're a little bit older and they're more experienced and Meguro-san is just like a kind soul. He's very nice. The music's sort of fitting because they're toy-sized sushi. And the way he explained it was just cute and kind. He's going to do really well as a sushi chef, I think, when he goes off and gets his own shop or if he decides to stay here. Chefs will usually train his apprentice for up to seven years at one shop. I believe Meguro-san is from Akita Prefecture, and he came down to Tokyo to study sushi here, I guess. And maybe he's going to go back to Akita. I'm not really sure. But if you'd like to know Meguro-san's story, go in there and talk to him. They speak English here. Yuki-san and his wife, his wife used to work in an international bank. So she speaks fluent English. And so does Sugeta-san speaks pretty good English because a lot of Westerners will come into the shop. So you shouldn't be intimidated to go to the shop. Not at all.

19:19 John Daub: Gunkan sushi is wrapped sushi like this. Is this actually on the menu? People are like, if it's on the menu, it's not on the menu! Calm down. So, right now, I'm a customer I've never seen before. When I'm not really busy at the shop, I'm here to get some customers to come over. So, I'll enjoy it with my eyes. He says, enjoyed by their eyes. Then eaten. Look, we live in an Instagram world. For better or for worse, a lot of people don't like it. Don't ask my dad to start Instagram. He probably just laughs at you and walks away.

20:05 John Daub: Now, Instagram is sort of part of the world. If you have a social media account or a YouTuber or you want to introduce stuff, you probably need Instagram. This is Instagram-worthy stuff. People eat it with their eyes. They're like, whoa. And when you get customers going, whoa, they're probably going to come back again. Anyone who thinks that this is a waste of time has no idea about how business works in the 21st century. This is the most genius thing to do, to have something that you present that people can take pictures of and tag the restaurant and share to the rest of the world. This is the kind of stuff that goes viral, in my mind, in the world today. But it is actually delicious to eat. It is. Even if the fish is small, it has a strong taste and it's delicious. It's really good to have people understand that.

21:00 John Daub: What he just said is really important. A quality cut of fish, very good fish, fresh fish for sushi will always have a flavor, even if it's microscopic. Always. And this is something that a lot of people don't understand. If you're getting sushi in the US and it's not fresh, it's been frozen for too long, it probably does not have a lot of taste. You gotta douse it in soy sauce. And you're tasting more of the soy sauce than the fish. In Japan, even though he is very creative and he'll create more than traditionalist sushi, the sushi has a lot more taste, I think, because there's more people eating it and it's just fresh, fresh, fresh, right from the market. And you can see he has a cabinet of fish in there. It's all from the morning. It doesn't last very long. By the end of the day, it's gone.

22:04 John Daub: He goes to the market, when it's sold out, he tells the customer, sorry, we don't have that available. And then the next morning, he'll go and get it. So lunchtime is always a really good time to go and get sushi. But a good piece of fish and egg, even though it's microscopic, will have a ton of flavor. All right? It will. It did! I ate it! It's a dish for kids who want to try it. Or just to... Served only when the shop isn't busy to the first-time customers. I promised that I would put that in so customers don't just go there to eat. Say, we want micro-sushi! Say, yeah, no. Read the video. I just wanted to put that as a disclaimer.

22:30 John Daub: First, let's try the maguro. This would be the best way to eat it. I wouldn't want to watch myself eat. So I bought this. It's a type of akami. Now let's try the micro version of it. Wait, is there any flavor? Is there? Yes! Because a small cut of fish can have flavor. Oh, I can smell sushi now. Now our deep-seated business really challenges your chopstick skills. This is hard to pick up, the micro-sushi. So the question is, does micro-akami have any taste at all? Does it? That's maguro. It's just a very slight taste of maguro. It might be because I actually ate maguro right before it. Gives it away, but very, very interesting.

23:35 John Daub: I got some questions from people. This is a director's cut, so I can explain it like this. This is what it's supposed to be. In the background of this video, you see a lady. This is Sugeta-san Yoshiko. She's the chef's wife. She's the business manager of the shop. But the problem is that I didn't know that when I started filming it, she wasn't there. And then she came back and started standing behind me. And when you make the video, you can't have someone behind you going like this and going like this. She's like going like this and looking at you. You stop looking at me and you start looking at her. So I had to find a way to blur the background. And this took kind of a long time. The idea of the video is to make sure that the content stands and you focus on that and not on what's in the background. So when you have somebody obnoxious and she didn't know. She's not a film producer or director. She doesn't know how this works. But when you're standing in the background looking at this, that's not cute. That takes away from the subject matter.

24:55 John Daub: A normal piece of sweet tamagoyaki (grilled egg) sushi looks natural. FYI. It looks the same. It's very accurate and looks like a model of it. The micro-ikura is my favorite. One egg is all it takes to give it color and flavor. It's stuck on the chopstick. I'm not holding it at all. It's just stuck on there. Don't get me started with the salmon. It's certainly 100 times smaller when put... I love this shot. This is my second choice for a thumbnail. It's ridiculous. But you can't really tell what this is because it's so small. I'd have to put an arrow and put micro-sushi. It's ridiculous. And you can see it's probably 1/300th of the size because inside of here there's got to be at least 100 grains. And if this one grain of rice is 1/3 the size of a grain of rice, you can see it. Compare it. This is probably 300 times bigger than this. I mean it requires 300 of these to make one of these. So it's not even a bite. It's like this in your mouth.

26:12 John Daub: Besides micro-sushi. I love that shot too. It's ridiculous. Like, why? Creativity takes them to the flower and plant world. This is where I wanted to introduce other things that he did because I think it wouldn't be fair to him as a chef to introduce just micro-sushi. Because his sushi is really good. It's different than high-end sushi. I've only eaten high-end sushi where it cost me like $300 to sit down and eat. Twice in my life. And one time I didn't pay. It was like a business expense for somebody else. So it's just a different experience. This is a more fun experience and I love the way he creates.

26:54 John Daub: A hydrangea (hydrangea flower) is a flower. And it looks very much like it. Sushi made with ikura and squid looks like a hydrangea. The cucumber giving it a nice green accent. It's a pretty neat design, I thought. This one, you can see the ikura egg on top. But when you look down on it, it's a cherry blossom. Meguro-san made this. This sakura (cherry blossom) won't last long. It was at the bottom of my stomach minutes after it was made. Ah, it is beautiful. I really love sushi. And Sugeta-san made me one final set. He makes sushi too. Not just the apprentice. Good handwork. Nice. Beautiful.

27:46 John Daub: That's why I bought sushi at the supermarket. Because I knew I would be really hungry watching this. You cannot just watch this on an empty stomach. It's crazy. Editing this, I ate a lot of sushi when I edited this. Because it's true. What you watch, you start wanting. That's the fun part, you know. Just have fun. Sushi is Japan's original street food made fast to be eaten fast. It should be fun and colorful. And at Takasago Sushi, it's all that and delicious too.

28:23 John Daub: There you go. So it's a really fun place. I probably will go back there again with Kanae Daub. After she saw it, she's like, I want to go there too. So I got to take her now. That's fine. But if you do go there, they do speak English. Please make a reservation in advance. Call them because they do get crowded. He's a known chef. He was on TV. So when someone is on TV in Japan, they become like a higher level. It's like everybody knows. Everyone wants to try it. So you want to call ahead or go there at like 4:50, like a few minutes before they open. And then you'll be able to sit at the counter. And maybe you should be polite and not stay there all day. Just stay there for like an hour, eat, talk a little bit, and then go. Because probably he'll tell you we have a reservation at 6. Is that okay? And then if you're like, okay, then yeah, you don't need a reservation. But for the most part, it's good to call in advance.

29:19 John Daub: And don't think that you are special enough for this micro sushi. It's only for special customers. Usually the first time, which makes you a good chance to get it. But don't expect it is what I'm saying. It's a special thing used to entertain. And if you have kids or if you're a lady or you're a YouTuber, you ask very nicely. I asked very nicely and I gave him my business card and said, please. And he said, okay, because then he didn't want to see me cry. Actually, it's very, it won't blow away or because it's stuck to the tray because the starch in the rice is it's not laid. It's kind of laid down in there. So it's on the tray. So it doesn't really, it would be hard for it to fly away. The rice is sticky. That's right.

30:22 John Daub: All right, let's do this here. I've got some sushi. I'm going to pull this down here. We're going to eat this. I put a coin here because I'm using Matsumi sushi. Matsumi is one of our backers on Patreon. She gave me a gimbal, a new one that I've been asking for for a while, but doesn't balance well. I need a coin on this side for balance. All right. So what I bought here was supermarket sushi. I have some wasabi. I eat it differently than everybody else. I love it spicy. I eat it with a lot of wasabi. And then there's these snobby traditional sushi. I'm a traditionalist on all my videos where I eat sushi, get down, mix the wasabi with the soy sauce. And I say to them, you eat it any way you want to. The reason why is because the sushi is made for the customer. It's not for you, the viewer. And it's not made for the chef either. There is no proper way to eat sushi. There is not.

31:24 John Daub: This is also cheap supermarket sushi. So it's not really as flavorful. Again, having fresh is different. Having fresh is different. I'm going to start right here with the ikura because I want to. I have a story I want to tell you. This is the ikura sushi. You can see that right now on your screen. I love it. You could have because they're like little teeny golden balls of happiness to me. They're salty, naturally salty. And I don't know. It's just so good. But the tobiko, which is a kind of fish egg. It's from flying fish. So they're very, very small and crunchy. Are maybe one twentieth the size of one of these. Tobiko is one like 1/20th the size of this so I want you to wrap your head around how hard it would be to make that gunkan sushi and this is called gunkan sushi because they've wrapped the seaweed around it.

33:30 John Daub: I mean it's good but it's supermarket sushi it's not the same. I think it's got a little bit of fishiness to it it's not bad. I mean it's probably better than any sushi in the US or in the United States you know but because here's a piece of anago (conger eel) and you can see it's been wrapped with seaweed you can see how many grains of rice there are now. I want you to wrap your head around the fact that what you saw in the micro sushi episode was one third one grain okay one third one grain and just one sushi is enough to be one bite it's crazy it really is crazy. I love anago I really love anago it is a little bit drier that's a good comment. Is it dry um oh it is low dress it is a little bit dry that's another reason to put some soy sauce onto it or you can take some of the ginger put it in soy sauce and I like to use this as a brush to brush on the on this. I mean purists will say don't do that but I'm a sushi snob you know what I mean it's like someone who can't eat a fast food burger.

35:05 John Daub: Oh that's spicy I can eat a fast food burger and enjoy it but I can also eat a really gourmet burger and enjoy that too sushi snobs cannot eat bad sushi and I know coffee snobs I can't drink certain coffee oh that's all right too but for me that's not my style. This is a piece of salmon probably from Norway and I shotgun the wasabi because that's me that's me you can argue all you want I'm not listening that's really good about six dollars and fifty cents 518 calories in this. Usually it'll tell you the origin um this one doesn't tell the origin this is um yeah it's just a nigiri sushi set no there's no origin. But I'll tell you this okay my wife Kanae Daub told me that these condiments usually that are in packages they're not very good so if you do buy supermarket sushi you might want your own if you're sort of a snob I kind of I'm a condiment snob these condiments are not that good this is probably really bad for you it's cheap soy sauce cheaper than the one you'd buy in the supermarket it's just the quality is not good and this wasabi is probably all processed garbage it is there's probably color in this.

36:41 John Daub: But for the purpose of lunch it's fine once in a while don't eat don't come to Japan and eat just convenience store food because you think it's fun and YouTubers introduce convenience store food too much it's not good for you do not eat convenience store food there's chemicals and there's a reason why the expiration date is three days later okay or it's extended it's not fresh it's not good there's chemicals and preservatives in it it's not the same as going to Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya is much healthier because you know it's prepared right in front of you uh that's another piece of salmon sweet egg now I kind of like it like this as much as I do in sushi a block of sweet egg on its own is to me this is could be sushi I guess but the definition of sushi is that it must be on lightly vinegared rice so this would not qualify as sushi it's not on lightly vinegar rice it's an accompaniment to sushi.

37:56 John Daub: The dashi is not good for you it's not good it's all right the first taste is sweet and it's nice and then after you bite a little bit you can taste chemicals in the fish soup stock they use to cook this so they don't use very good fish soup stock um so the recipe is like it's like a generic recipe you can tell. I love sweet egg too much to give that respect but I will eat it because I'm hungry. Tako (octopus) does anyone know what tako is first one who writes in gets an award taco what's taco. Tasty Chronicles writes an octopus ah you win an award what you win this I'm just gonna put this through the camera I know Tasty all right here we go it's good octopus is one two it's hard to mess that up this is makizushi (rolled sushi) it's sushi that's been rolled and then cut nice.

39:18 John Daub: Which is ika (squid) is my least favorite and it's hard for it to be done right but when I went to Saito Sushi with um my friend Simon and Martina invited me to one of their friends to the chef's restaurant um it was pretty pricey but the squid was better it was amazing and it's just that's what you pay for it's to be able to a high-end sushi chef can take this which you might not like but you can just go and eat it and squid and they turn it into something that has an amazing flavor that you've never experienced before it hits different parts of your tongue that's why you go to a high-end sushi not for volume not even for the sushi it's to experience new tastes that's what it really is all about it's the not even the art of it it's and it's beautiful to watch it's about the tastes hitting every part of your palate um that's so good the ika is good this one's not bad that ika is pretty good it's surprising.

40:42 John Daub: This does not look good this is negitoro (minced tuna with green onions) and it looks kind of not fresh negi toro is minced up tuna with sometimes it has negi or green welsh onions inside of it ah it's not bad but it's not this is real negitoro this is Sushi Saito um in Roppongi hi-end sushi. I'm trying to show you why high-end sushi is worth it. I was pretty critical of high-end sushi until I experienced it from a master. And you can see how fresh it is. Every movement is perfect. You see the color? Look at how dark that color is. That's such a beautiful color. Kanae's gonna kill me. No, why didn't you take me? You're gonna kill me. She says, why didn't you take me? Cuz they only had reservation for three. It was either me or Kanae.

42:51 John Daub: Look at that. That's a grill. That's so beautiful. So just the experience of it is different. You can't compare. That's a sweet egg. Check it out. This is the sweet egg from high-end sushi. It looks nothing like the yellow that we're used to. This is a different recipe. Just lightly grilled on top. And on the bottom, there's like a... It's just a flavor explosion. And this is what you pay for. You don't pay for just the sushi. You're paying for the experience. And you're paying for like having something that you've never tasted before. Here's Saito-san making it. Look at his concentration. There's a moment after he puts the sushi on the plate that it just settles. Like there's a natural settling of it. And it's beautiful. You don't see that at 100 yen at conveyor belt sushi. Do you know why? Because it's already on the plate. But after he makes it, he makes the sushi, and he puts down, his eyes are like... And then the sushi, you can see it just start settling. That is an art.

44:32 John Daub: He didn't really put the sushi on the rice. It settled naturally down. So there's no bleeding of... I don't know how he did it. That's why he's a master. That's why he's a master. It's just I could sit there all day, watch him making sushi. Look at his eyes. The way he's focused on every single movement practiced 100 times. It's a seven-year minimum apprenticeship. All right? What makes, I think, this one of the best sushi shops in Japan better than Jiro Sushi? Jiro Sushi takes it too seriously. Jiro, this is my opinion. Saito-san smiles. I think he has a real love and affection for Simon and Martina. And I think that they have a great connection. And you don't see this because they take their job so seriously. He does. And Saito-san, he's having fun. And a sushi chef should have a little bit of fun. All these suits and things. It's a thing of beauty. I mean, I could watch this all day.

46:23 John Daub: This is like reliving a meal from three months ago. Four months ago, we ate this. Sorry, my coin is broken. We're almost done. Alright, the last thing I'm going to eat for you is this. This. Alright, I'm not even going to touch this maguro. Maybe I'll eat it off camera. It just does not look good. This is akami. It just does not look fresh to me. So I'm going to kind of pass. I shouldn't have eaten that negitoro. It's questionable. This is the shrimp. The shrimp is boiled, so it's not raw. So it's going to be okay, but already looks kind of generic. It's good. It's hard to mess that up. It is a little skinny. And this is tai. That looks like an okay piece. You have to be careful.

47:37 John Daub: Supermarket sushi is something that you can eat on sale after like 9 or 10 p.m. Supermarkets just want to clear it out. They'll be half price. So this is $6 now. It's $3. It's $3 at the end of the night. But it's at the end of the night. The sushi might have been sitting there for a while. Maybe you want to pay a little bit more for fresh stuff. That's what I'm saying. Let's put a happy ending onto this episode. I'm really thankful to Sugeta-san and his wife, Yoshiko, who I blurred out. I really apologize if you're watching this. But very friendly shop. It's the kind of shop that I think I'm more connected with than something like Sushi Saito. And Sushi Saito, I love it. But it's something like, that's something you do maybe once a year or once in your life.

48:27 John Daub: This is a kind of sushi shop that you would go to once a week. And then there's sushi shops that you can go to every day, which are like the conveyor belt sushi. That's daily sushi. This is weekly sushi for me and my budget. And then there's Saito-san, which is lifetime sushi. And you just have to balance it out. You have to understand it that there's so many different varieties of sushi. It's just not about the micro sushi this episode. It's about a sushi chef that innovates and can come up with unique ways to please his customers. And that is the heart of a Japanese chef. When you look more at your customers and you stop looking at what you're making, and you try to find ways to make the experience better for them. To me, that's Japanese eating at fine restaurants, good restaurants. And that's what I got here at Takasago Sushi.

49:15 John Daub: Thanks so much for watching and sharing. Lunch with me, lunch time with me. If you have any questions, leave it in the comment below. Discord server! I'm going to be introducing the Discord server in the next Only in Japan Go. It's going to be a Discord server episode. But if you are a Patreon supporter, please... I'm always looking to get people to support like this. I have a postcard club with screenshots from the episodes. If you're a Patreon supporter, you will have a smaller Discord group that I will go to more. And the support, you can already use Discord right now. Discord means that I can go on, this is so cool. I'm in love with Discord already. Discord is something that I can go on and I can just start having a conversation with viewers at any time, anywhere. This is what I love about Discord.

50:21 John Daub: And if you're a Patreon supporter, I check, there's general chat, which is what everyone's gonna get. And then there's like, there's this. Samurai chat we have for Samurai level supporters. So yeah, I mean, you can get it right now if you're a Patreon supporter, but we're gonna start this in the next live stream. I'm gonna introduce you to the Discord server. It's gonna be pretty cool. It's gonna be very cool. Right now I'm in the general chat. So you're probably gonna hear. Anyway, if you're a Patreon supporter in Discord, you can chime in at any time to say hello. But right now I'm on the Discord server. Nosh, are you there? Hello, John. See, this is the coolest thing ever. All right, Nosh, are we ready to introduce the Discord server to the rest of the channel? I believe we are.

51:23 John Daub: Is that UFO Bob? It works better than it sounds. Usually we have something called Push to Talk. Yes, it is. UFO Bob says, yes, it is. This is a way where you can meet a lot of the people that you see in the chat. I think this is gonna be really cool because all of the names that you see chatting, they have voices. They actually have faces too. But let's just start off with voices first. And I wanna make a really nice community of people that we can talk about Japan, the channel, in the Discord server. So we have a general chat, which is open to everybody. And then we have Patreon supported levels. If you do sign up to Patreon, use the same email that you use for Patreon, and you will automatically be put into a special group with a really nice community. The general chat group, I believe, is gonna be crazy. You're gonna wanna be in a smaller group. Who am I to tell you what to do?

52:23 John Daub: All right, so next episode, we're gonna open up the Discord server to everybody on the Go channel. It's gonna be crazy. It's gonna be fun. Join Patreon. Join us in chat. Yeah. Yeah, you can join. Absolutely. Yeah, all right, Vern is in there. Who else is, Jason's here. Jason, I know you. Hey, John. Hey, Nosh. Hey, Vern. You have full volume. Hey, guys, how's it going? All right, and Eric's here. Is that Eric? Yep, that's me. All right. How's it going, John? All right, good. Tasty, are you here? Ah, she's muted. Tasty needs to get her microphone set up. Ah, Tasty. Tasty, I'm sorry. Sorry, congratulations. You guessed octopus. So I have to think of something. I'll put something special in your next box. How's that? I will reward you somehow. Camphy is here as well. That's great.

53:20 John Daub: So we have kind of a small family on Patreon that we talk to here. So it's kind of worth joining, I think, anyways. But general chat will be open to everybody in the next live stream. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments below. And thanks so much for watching. You guys want to say goodbye to everybody? Only in Japan. Goodbye. Goodbye. Sayonara. Sayonara. Very good. See you guys, everybody, wherever you are in the world. Good day, good night. Have a good time and a good weekend. And I'll see you in the next live stream.