Last week, my youngest daughter turned 5. Because three of us (both daughters and myself) were recovering from the mumps, we cancelled her birthday party and rescheduled it for the 14th.

As a reward to both girls for their hard work in setting up fun activities at the party, we took them to a local kaiten sushi 回転寿司 (“rotating sushi”) store called Kura.

I remember going to a kaiten zushi restaurant when I first arrived in Japan; things have changed since then (almost two decades ago). Everything’s automated now. The only time you see workers is when you specifically call them using the “yobidashi” 呼び出し call button.

The bottom “lane” of the kaiten belt constantly rotates to bring random selections of onigiri zushi お握り寿司 (“handshaped”) and maki zushi 巻き寿司 (“rolls”). The top lane is amazing: when you special order something, your order zips along to your table and stops as if by magic. We ordered a beef bowl for my youngest (she won’t touch sushi…) just to see the top lane in action. (The bowl appeared to have a magnet embedded in the bottom…or maybe it was a microchip).

Given that our oldest daughter had performed a magic show at her sister’s birthday party, the magically appearing beef bowl seemed entirely appropriate as an encore!