Sushi is probably the strangest food I have ever come across. This is because people from a lot of other countries are not familiar with eating raw meat.

While surprisingly, I didn't get a chance to try sushi on my first trip to Japan, but I tried it in India after I returned. Little did I know that freshness of the meat was such a big deal and I was bummed by my first sushi experience here. It tasted a bit bitter, bland and nothing exciting.

When I first moved to Japan, I ran away from every sushi dinner invite. A while later, I decided to open up my mind a bit more and went along with my friend as he encouraged me. Oh the freshness and the consistency, made me fall in love with it at the very first bit in Japan.

I realised how sushi anywhere but where the fish is fished could never be as good. it would be the same for any other raw meet. While I made up my mind to never have sushi again unless the fish has just come out from the sea, I made the most out of my time in Japan.

So I found myself heading to the conveyor belt sushi store every week, working at the sushi section of a local super market, experiencing the scene at Tsukiji market at some 5am and cycling 35kms each way to a fish market in Shimonoseki for a fresh sushi lunch.

 I hope you enjoyed my story. You can read more about my https://heenas.in/life-in-japan/ here.