Sushi is everywhere in Japan and there’s a wide range of sushi restaurants to choose from. You can go from chain sushi restaurants to the uber expensive sushi places like Sukibayashi Jiro from the documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. We wanted to have fun while eating our sushi, so we went to Kura Sushi.

Kura Sushi has several locations throughout Tokyo and we went to the one located in Shinagawa. The reason why we chose this sushi joint was because you can play fun games while you eat. For every five plates you eat, you will be entered into a little game on the screen at your table and maybe win a prize. We were lucky enough to win a gachapon with a cat sticker. The prize isn’t the best thing in the world, but it’s just some quirky Japanese fun you can have while you’re enjoying your sushi.

It’s also different because it’s mostly a self-serve restaurant and you order everything through the digital screen at your table. You can pick up the beer, juice and water at the cooler and water dispensing machine in the back of the restaurant. The rest of the food is delivered to you via conveyer belt.

There is already sushi going around on the conveyer belt that you can scoop up as it goes by your table, but if there is something in particular you would like to eat, you can order it through the digital menu. The order is out within 5 minutes or less and the dish shoots out from the kitchen to your table on the conveyer belt. We especially liked this restaurant because they served other foods like fried chicken and udon, which we really love. We tried fried corn for the first time too and it was pretty tasty. All the food we ordered was great.

The best part about Kura Sushi is that it is so cheap! We ordered well over 10 dishes from appetizers to sushi to udon and the bill was only 1500 yen (~$15). We couldn’t believe it. That’s part of the reason why this restaurant is so popular in Japan. We wanted to visit this place the last time we were in Japan, but we went at prime dinner time around 7pm and it was packed. The wait time was around 2 hours, so we had to go eat somewhere else. This time, we were smarter and went to the restaurant at 4:30pm before the dinner rush came through.