Originally Posted by
robyng
Which of the sushi restaurants on the Tabelog list that you've been to recently did you like the best - say the top 4 or 5? Ones that to the best of your knowledge serve lunch and take credit cards (I can look that up if you don't happen to remember).
FWIW - there is one thing I am going to try hard to avoid on this trip. And that is going to restaurant after restaurant where I am greeted by a counter full of 30-somethings from countries outside Japan who think that because they know how to take a picture - they're competent to write a blog about food. This wasn't a problem during our first trip to Japan in 2006 - because Japan wasn't really on the food radar screen back then. But it's on *everyone's* food radar screen today - and I don't like restaurants that are "tourist attractions" (I especially dislike being surrounded by people who spend their entire meals taking pictures). Note that I am not a total curmudgeon - but am pretty close to it when it comes to restaurant stuff I don't like. Robyn
Saito is indeed quite good, but the trick is that it's sushi offerings are (at a very high level of execution) rather pedestrian. What's outstanding about Saito is the tsumami parts of the meal that you get
before the sushi, but
aren't part of the lunch menu. So if you go for lunch and get the lunch specials, you'll think it's great but what's all the fuss. You have to order the dinner menu even at lunch. And there goes the idea of a "cheaper lunch". I think Sushi Unchi and its sister restaurant Sushi Unko are outstanding, but they are both insider's places. If you go for lunch to either make sure to get the more expensive sets if you want to get the most love.
As for 30-something star-fecker food porn tourists, there is no better way to run into them than to follow the usual "guides" to determine where to go. Using a foreign-language guide or a foreign-language blog or web review to pick where you eat pretty much guarantees you'll run into them.
And Japan has been on the "food radar" for a long, long time. Just not one whose instruction manual comes with a crimson or a red cover.