Tokyo Sushi for US 8 cents a piece (as long as you also want a beer) makes us believe in miracles

Oedo Sushi makes us an offer we can’t, and would never want to, refuse.

At the end of a long, hard day at work nothing beats a tall, cold beer. Or at least that’s what we thought until our Japanese-language reporter Yuichiro Wasai found a way to improve upon perfection.

Walking through Tokyo’s Okachimachi neighborhood (in the south part of the Ueno district), he spotted a branch of conveyor belt sushi chain Oedo Sushi. The prospect of revolving plates of seafood would have been enticing enough on its own, but Yuichiro was powerless to resist when he saw this sign…

…offering a special deal of five pieces of sushi and a drink for just 550 yen (US$4.45). While the sushi is omakase-style, with the exact mix of fish you get up to the chef, you get to pick the drink yourself, and you can choose from 10 different types of alcoholic beverages:
● Draft beer
● Oolong-hi (oolong tea with shochu)
● Ryokucha-hi (green tea with shochu)
● Whiskey highball
● Lemon shochu sour
● Grape shochu sour
● Plum shochu sour
● Shochu with soda water
● Shochu with water
● Shochu with hot water

Oedo Sushi calls the five-piece-sushi-and-drink deal the karunomi (light drinking) set, and after Yuichiro specified he wanted a beer the staff speedily brought him his food and beverage.

Since the chefs are the ones selecting your sushi, you’re placing your culinary fate in their hands. They took good care of our boy Yuichiro, though, hooking him up with tuna, salmon, shrimp, and squid, four of the major mainstays of sushi, plus a piece of buri (mature yellowtail), which is the type of fish Oedo Sushi prides itself on most of all.

Flavor-wise, they were all tasty, keeping with the standards for conveyor belt sushi in Japan. Yuichiro was curious about something, though. If the karunomi set is priced at 550 yen, how much are you paying for the sushi part of it?

The five-piece omakase sushi plate is only offered as part of the karunomi set, but draft beer is also available by itself from the regular menu. Oedo Sushi sells beer in two sizes, small and medium, and the karunomi set comes with a medium, which according to the menu usually costs…

…500 yen. So some simple math tells us that you’re paying 50 yen for five pieces of sushi, or the incredibly budget-friendly price of just 10 yen, roughly 8 U.S. cents, per piece!

But wait, how can we be sure that the medium-size beer you get in the karunomi set is really as big as the one listed on the menu for 500 yen? By ordering one to compare, which is exactly what Yuichiro did, and he can confirm that, yep, the beers are the exact same size.

▼ Left: A regular medium beer ordered from the menu for 500 yen
Right: The medium beer that came as part of the karunomi set
Not pictured: Yuichiro’s heart, filled with quasi-senbero happiness

There are only two drawbacks Yuichiro could find. First, the karunomi set isn’t offered at each and every Oedo Sushi branch, though we can at least confirm that you can follow in his slightly inebriated footsteps by heading to their Okachimachi location. Second, the karunomi set is being offered for a limited, though undetermined period. For the time being, though, for anyone who’s also craving a beer, this is quite possibly the cheapest restaurant sushi on the planet.

Restaurant information
Oedo Sushi (Okachimachi Kitaguchi branch) / 大江戸（御徒町北口店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Taito-ku, Ueno 6-2-2
東京都台東区上野6-2-2
Open 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. (Monday-Saturday), 11 a.m.-10 p.m. (Sunday, holidays)

Photos ©SoraNews24
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