Followed by baby firefly squid, fresh. We’ve had these at a restaurant in LA, and you can just tell they were flash frozen for transport, these have absolutely no fishy taste at all, straight up ocean, plush texture just gives vs elastic shoe sole crap they have here.

Then a couple cubes of thick cut blue fin tuna, was interesting to have it in this thickness by itself, where as you normally get it sliced thin on rice. Not too fatty, you just focus on the taste of the flesh, bloody, iron tinged.

Last chunk style sashimi was either scallop or clam adducter. The variety of fish parts here are so plentiful we can’t tell what is what.

Continuing in the non-fish sashimi was the marinated special spring octupus. We were happy as the previous place told us that octopus is usually served in the winter, but I guess they have a spring-summer variety that is marinated, so sweet and chewy, loved it.

Final non-fish sashimi, abalone steamed for six hours. We were so glad it is abalone season here. I have had this cooked alive now, steamed for six hours, pounded and grilled, tempura’ed, omg, endless.

More exotic sashimi, gnomefish. We loved this, it’s like this lipoid fish with fat bubbles in between the connective tissue. We were intrigued by the variety of white fish here that never makes it to the US, like alfonsino, aburi, all the red snapper varieties and ages like baby vs adult, as well as the aji varieties, like shima aji, regular aji, on and on.

Followed by ever more alien to our taste buds, ice fish, this spear shaped translucent fish served in a ponzu with chopped green onion, I love when they stare at me while I eat them.

Final sashimi, chu-toro, medium fat blue fin, sliced thin I guess because it would be a blob if served as a chunk, firm, delicious. We were just starting to wonder when the sushi was going to start, then boom:

Flounder, quite subtle we must say, not usualy served at sushi places, not like flounder readily available in US.

Then straight to the dopeness, maguro, no transition from white fish to dark fish here, straight to the gold, next O-toro, taste buds were like…more, more..

Then baby squid, much more tender than the usual ika we get, nicely wasabied. The wasabi here is more mild and fragrant, you can put so much more on your fish compared to the processed variety.

Then aji with diced green onion, and some kind of sesame oil. We swear, this piece of sushi, you must get every time you go to a sushi restaurant, aji! So much umami with this fish prepared the way it is in Japan. All the places we went to, this piece rocked us.

Another bizarro one for us, baby white shrimp sushi. Little maggot looking little guppies, all stacked on top of each other to look like one piece of fish. The taste was subtle, more the slimy texture of little worms in your mouth that was pleasureful.

Then Hokkaido uni, so much sweeter than Claifornia uni, no joke, don’t let people tell you otherwise, try finding sushi places that ship the Japanese uni alive in tanks to the states and cut them out before serving. It looks like these were pre-prepped, but they have the Tsujki fish market, we don’t.

Pencil fish sushi, nice thickness to it, sliced up nicely to absorb the ponzu. We never had this before, like a piece of halibut almost.

Then clam adductors on rice wrapped in seaweed, so sweet and tender, tasted like scallop, I guess that is what scallop is in a way anyhow, adductor.

Getting close to the end, giant squid (ika), more like a giant clam flavor, more meaty than usual squid.

Finally akagai, ark clam, not as red as the ones I had at Jiro and Imamura, still sweet, and still my new favorite sushi item that I never knew I loved until I came to Japan.