naked sushi

the sushi restaurant at the bottom floor of my apartment building had an all you can eat special this past friday. they called it naked sushi.

i like all you can eat sushi. so we decided to go. i went to check it out before everybody arrived to see what was included. when i got inside, i asked the waitress what kind of sushi it included and if we could order anything from the sushi menu. she said we couldn’t but to not worry because they included specialty rolls too. she pointed to a table across the room with a bunch of sushi on it. it was buffet style. i asked her if i could go take look. she kind of rolled her eyes at me, but allowed me to go. i stepped closer to see if they had special rolls or nigiri or sashimi and not just simple california rolls. my eyes started scanning the tasty looking specialty rolls. to my surprise, they also had nigiri. further down the table, they even had sashimi, which is typically the most expensive kind and rarely included in all you can eats. i was pretty impressed. further down the table, i saw a foot. yes, a foot. i paused in a combination of confusion, a little bit of shock, and a little bit of confusion of whether i should be a little shocked. i continued to look further down the table from where the foot was located. the foot was attached to a figure of a person. i was still dizzy from the shock, so i couldn’t tell if it was a mannequin or not. but then it started breathing. now i know why the waitress gave me such a weird look.

i went upstairs to my apartment. i took another look at the flyer. upon closer examination, i noticed the japanese word ‘nyotaimori’. i looked up nyotaimori on wikipedia. sure enough, it is the japanese practice of serving sushi on the body of a woman, often a naked model. personally, i think the flyer was misleading. instead of ‘naked sushi’, i think it should’ve read ‘naked, sushi’ (with a comma).

i warned all parties involved, and nobody objected. so we went. it was definitely strange at first. i’ve been to 1 strip club in my life, and it was an all nude strip club. that experience was less akward than this sushi experience. my natural reaction was that i was doing something rude. it’s like you can’t touch her, but you can eat raw tuna from off her body.

this particular nyotaimori event had a model that wasn’t completely naked. she had this pink fabric wrapped around her like a bikini, which i thought was pretty hot, but that’s beside the point. focus, people. the nigiri and sashimi was also not direclty touching any part of her body as some nyotaimoris do. they were laid out on leaves placed on her. i started with the nigiri on her legs and worked my way up. on her chest she had sashimi peices that stuck to the leaves a bit, so they were a little difficult to pull off a piece at a time. my tongs accidentally grabbed part of the pink fabric on her chest, and i did not realize it until i started gently tugging, so that was only slightly embarrassing. i wanted to apologize, but i was still somewhat weirded out, so i just didn’t say anything. thinking back, i probably should have.

so how was the food, you ask. i didn’t have high expectations, so i was pretty satisfied. the trick with this restaurant is to pick their specialty rolls. the nigiri and sashimi off the girl’s body was interesting. i suppose the point of nyotaimoris is to heighten the senses, which it did. i personally don’t particularly enjoy mixing certain senses together particularly when one of the senses will be sampling raw fish, but that’s just me. i’m not sure if it was just because they had been sitting at room temperature for that long (there was only 1 other party in the restaurant partaking in the nyotaimoris) or if it was her body warmth, but the nigiri and sashimi off her body was a little too warm for my taste.

would i do it again? yeah, probably. at $25, it’s a little expensive, especially for mediocre sushi. but the experience was kind of fun. although, next time, i’m definitely not going with my mom. definitely took a little something away from the experience for me i think. when we were eating she decided to share her story of her first plate of sushi. she said she told the model that she would try not to tickle her. while i was going back and getting seconds, my mom decided to take a picture of me from her phone that she thankfully doesn’t know how to use. after the buffet was over, the staff helped the model up. they held up a black tablecloth like a screen while she sat up. as they wrapped her in it while she walked off, my mom started applauding. granted, this girl had been lying silent and dead still almost naked for 2 and a half hours while strangers picked food off of her, but as much as i thought she deserved applause, i certainly wasn’t going to give people anoher opportunity to interpret my actions incorrectly.