Odds And Yens: The Holy Land (of Fish)

I've never understood how Japanese business works. All the way back to my college days when I would get bored, drink a beer and putz around the city center on my bike looking for more beer I peered into fantastically overpriced, perpetually customer-less shops and wracked my brains to figure out why their business model didn't see them quickly and soundly collapse like the house of cards they appear to be built on, as would happen in any other market economy. Believe it or not, some of them remain to this day!

Where am I going with this again...?

Oh, right, sushi. Kappa Sushi is a new player in the kaitenzushi (conveyer belt sushi) wars of Hita, and I have no flippin' clue why it's set up shop here. The polar opposite of the previously mentioned failed business models, Kappa is such a shining light of fabulousness in the dining abyss of Western Oita Prefecture that after tasting from their Well of Infinite Delights I fully expect the citizens of other nearby municipalities to riot in the street, clawing and tearing at the eye sockets of police and elected officials as they wonder why--why!--haven't they one in their town. Now, Kappa is a pretty famous chain of kaitenzushi shops from the Tokyo area with (now) three shops in Kyushu, the other two being in Fukuoka and Dazaifu, and it's precisely that hipness and regional rarity that has me so confused--just what the hell are they doing in Hita?

Two seemingly simple factors make Kappa so utterly fascinating: the ordering and delivery systems. A trip to a normal kaitenzushi shop might have you scanning the approaching or even distant items on the ever-moving belt for tasty morsels, sometimes leading to disappointment when some jackass at the table just upstream of you takes the plate you've been waiting for, like, two minutes for. I hate them. If nothing appeals to you then there's always a sushi chef to yell orders at, but then there's the soul-sapping guilt that comes with brusquely ordering around another human being. Kappa does away with the human element almost entirely with a touchscreen ordering system that has all the sushi categorized in menus by type and then alphabetically arrayed. Not long after inputting your order--and this is the part you need to be sitting down for--an OMGWTF miniature shinkansen bullet train comes shooting out of the wall and stops at your table with the goods for you to pluck off and chow down on! Holy Bejeebuz!