Nigiri Uminai Sushi: aka the ¥105 Sushi Go Round

When I lived in Okinawa as a kid, I thought that Sushi-go-Round restaurants were the coolest thing in the world. What an inventive idea! I love being able to see my food before I choose it, and sushi is already one of my favorite foods. Coming back to Okinawa as an adult slightly changed my perspective. I visited an old favorite "Kaitenzushi" (the Japanese word for Sushi-go-round) restaurant in American Village, and it was a lot more expensive than it used to be (when my parents were paying!). Plus, it takes about 40 minutes to get there from my house, and I tend to forget I'm hungry until I'm ravenous.

I thought we would never go to a Kaitenzushi restaurant again, until my husband and I heard about the ¥105 Sushi Go Round. Not only is it less than 10 minutes from Courtney AND McT, but it's cheap, and has really good sushi!



The full name of this restaurant is Nigiri Uminai. The first word, Nigiri, is the name of the style sushi that has a piece of sashimi sitting on a little ball of sushi rice. The second word, Umi, means ocean. To be completely honest, I have no idea what the last part of it means. If anyone speaks more Japanese than I do, please feel free to let me know! To keep it simple, I just call this place Nigiri Sushi, for short.



Like any sushi-go-round, Nigiri Sushi has both a bar area and booth tables organized around a moving track full of individual plates of sushi. You are free to grab whichever plate catches your eye, and at the end of your meal, your price will be calculated by tallying the number and type of plates on your table. There is also ice water and hot green tea available at your table, via tea packets and a hot water spigot at the table.



If you sit in the bar area, a sushi chef in the middle of the tracks can take special requests for you, and make them right in front of you. If you sit at the booths, however, there is a really neat touch screen computer system that will allow you to special order sushi, drinks, desserts, and even some assorted side items. Everything is written in both Japanese and English, and its really intuitive. Even better, when your order is ready, it wheels out to your table on a little race car!

This is a great family friendly restaurant to go to. It's better if everyone going likes sushi, but there are a few other things available as side items. They usually have small bowls of soba, fried chicken pieces, potato wedges, and some assorted dessert items. There are a few things on their menu that are a little more than ¥105, but they are still fairly cheap. We usually leave completely stuffed for under ¥2,000 for two adults, including a few sodas.


Directions:

From Camp Courtney, simply take a left onto Route 75. You'll cross through 3 stop lights before seeing Nigiri Sushi and the Tsutaya movie/music store on the right.

From McTureous, take a right out the gate onto Route 8. From there, continue straight for a while. Take a left onto Route 75 just past the KFC and Lawson. Drive one block north, then turn into the Tsutaya parking lot on the left, and Nigiri Sushi will be at the far end of the parking lot.


View Nigiri Kaitenzushi in a larger map

Gushikawa Soba

If you are in the mood for some really good soki soba, Gushikawa soba is a great option. I noticed this restaurant the first week my husband and I were on Okinawa, while we were still driving between the Foster Plaza Housing area and Camp Courtney nearly every day on Route 330/75. None of the signs are in English, but I had learned just enough Japanese to read that it was a "Family Restaurant" called Gushikawa Soba.

After we moved on post and learned that 330/75 is the SLOWEST way to get to Kadena or Foster from Courtney, I all but forgot about this place. I would've never remembered it existed if I hadn't been invited to go sightseeing at the castle ruins with my friend J and another friend's visiting relative, who we affectionately called "Mama K". They mentioned that they would like to try some soba for lunch, and it clicked. This place wasn't too far out of the way, since we were going to take the Expressway, so I took them here. We all really enjoyed it!

The staff here was very friendly, but only spoke a little English. Unfortunately, they do NOT have an English menu. However, they do have a very nice wax display of the food they serve outside the restaurant, and since we all wanted soba anyways, it was fairly simple to order. And since everything was fairly cheap, and really tasty, I would still recommend it, even if you only know how to say "konnichiwa," "gushikawa/tempura soba, kudasai" and "arigatou."


Mama K chose to order one of the "Set Meals." From the little Japanese I can read, we figured out that her meal included soki soba, rice, a salad, and some fried chicken. I was unclear on the difference between the sets, but I believe they just include different side dishes in place of the chicken. The waitress helped us decide. Mama K said the dressing on the salad was a thousand island, and that it was very filling. She couldn't finish all the soba and left a few pieces of the chicken.



J chose to order the Gushikawa Soba. It was a traditional soki soba with Okinawan style pork on top. She said the pork was very tender, but a little fatty. (Just how the Okinawans like it!) Her soba came with a side of fried egg to put on the soba, and a piece of inari, which is sushi rice inside an envelope of deep fried tofu. She really enjoyed her meal! Her only complaint was that it was hard to get used to eating noodles with chopsticks instead of a fork. Luckily, the shopkeeper was nice enough to give us one for her to use- though she did side eye us! I guess it would be funny to Japanese people that Americans struggle with chopsticks.



I ordered the Tempura Soba, which I spotted in the wax display outside before we even walked into the restaurant. I am a huge fan of tempura, and in fact it's my favorite Japanese food. I was really surprised that anyone would ever think to combine it with soba, another one of my favorites. I was in heaven!

My meal was a huge bowl of pork soba with scallions, and as you can see in the picture, they replaced the pork meat with a feast of assorted tempura goodies. There was a shrimp or two, a huge slice of acorn squash, onion, green beans, and I believe there was even a mushroom in there. The huge portion would have satisfied three or four of me, but it was so delicious that you can bet your life that I ate pretty darn close to the whole bowl. I highly recommend it!

I chose to just have some water that was available at the drink table set out for customers, but they do sell soft drinks (sodas) and Orion beer. They were reasonably priced, but it's been almost three months since I've visited, so I can't remember exactly how much it cost.

I do know that all three of us got out for under ¥3,000. It was actually closer (but a smidge over) ¥2,500! I'd say that's really good for the amount of (delicious) food we ate. The set was the most expensive, at just over ¥1,000, but there were several options available for between ¥500 and ¥1,000 as well.


Hours:

Gushikawa Soba is open from 11:00 am until 9:00 pm.


Directions:

Gushikawa Soba is located along Route 75, just a short drive south of Courtney and McTureous. From Courtney, you'll just take a left onto 75 (or a double left from the housing gate). From McTureous, you can simply take a right on Route 8, then continue past 2 stoplights until you see 75, and take a right. Once you're headed south on Route 75, just continue straight until you see it on the right. It is about a block past the big intersection of Routes 36 and 75.

If you are heading to Gushikawa Soba from Kadena or Foster, the easiest way is to simply travel north on Route 330, accessible from Foster's PX gate, or Kadena's Gate 2. If you continue straight long enough, Route 330 turns into Route 75. From this direction, the restaurant will be on the left. Once you pass the San-A store, you are getting close.

There is plenty of parking along both sides of the building (North side, and facing the street). If that's full, or if you have a slightly bigger vehicle like me, you can drive just past the building to the parking lot on the south side. There are plenty of spots there, I just hadn't noticed them because I was hungry and food-centric at that particular moment in time.


View Gushikawa Soba in a larger map

Kaisen Sumibiyaki Shinsenmaru

My husband took me to this great Izakaya (Japanese bar and grill type restaurant) a few weeks ago. He had his eye on it for quite some time, but recently I have been very picky about what type of food I am in the mood for. He finally convinced me, and we both really enjoyed it! We plan to visit again sometime when I can get up the nerve to call in and make a reservation in Japanese.

When we arrived, there was a valet outside. Since there was an open parking spot right across from the door, we just parked and walked in, but we saw him retrieve a car for another couple after they had finished their meal. I believe his main job is to make sure customers aren't parked in spaces where they'll get towed.

After you go through the large entrance way, you'll climb a flight of stairs to get to the restaurant. They have mostly Western style tables that are separated into rows by wall dividers. It's dimly lit like you'd expect a bar restaurant to be. They told us when we arrived at 6:00 pm that we needed to be finished by 8:00 pm because they were booked solid for the night. I would recommend making a reservation if you plan to try this place!

The food there was fairly good, and not too expensive. They served a variety of a la carte items, including pizza, salad, yakitori, assorted appetizers, and a big variety of sushi and sashimi. Prices for each individual item were around ¥300-¥400 for the smaller items like yakitori or some of the nigiri sushi. Pizzas were a little more expensive, around ¥600 for the one we tried, but some were more expensive. The pizzas were a little small, if my husband had ordered only it, he would've left hungry. They come in 6 pieces, about the size of a small in the states. Some of the larger items and the set arrangements of sushi and sashimi were around ¥1,200 or so.

It was pretty dark inside, so we couldn't take pictures of our food, but we enjoyed it! I loved their vegetable Kimchee, and I also ordered an asparagus and bacon kebab. We ordered a set arrangement of sashimi, and two kinds of nigiri sushi. Their fish was very good! We both loved it. My husband also ordered fried cheese, which was essentially a cheddar cheese lumpia, and it came with ketchup and mayonnaise. He also tried the Potato pizza. It was good, but not at all what we expected! It had mashed potatoes on a thin crust with no sauce, and it was covered in cheese and a mayo sauce. Next time, I would rather try the taco pizza, it sounded good! We got out for only ¥4910, which is pretty good for the amount of food and drinks we had ordered.

The best deal there seemed to be the drinks. They have a great special where if you ask for it ahead of time, every alcoholic drink you order for an hour's time is only ¥105. Kirin Draft beer and their cocktails are usually ¥399. I ordered a soft drink, which was ¥300 or so, but beware there are no free refills! My husband ordered two draft beers, and ended up paying ¥210, while we paid ¥600 for my oolong teas!

The staff spoke fairly good English. However, I will warn you that the English menu they brought us didn't include the list for sushi or sashimi, the day's specials, or the drink menu. I am unclear whether there is a printed English drink menu or not- he seemed to understand that I could read a little, and since we didn't order mixed cocktails it wasn't an issue for us.


So how much Japanese should you know to go here?

Overall, you could probably get away with little to no Japanese knowledge, if you are smart about reading the menu. If you don't read Japanese, but want sushi or sashimi, there are a few premade sets of each. You will be able to identify them on the menu because they are more expensive than everything else listed, and they have numbered how many kinds of fish come in the set. If that fails, you can point at the pretty picture of the set on the menu, and your server should be able to help you from there. Don't do this if you are picky about fish, because our sashimi had both ika (cuttlefish) and tako (octopus) sashimi in it! Luckily, I like ika and my husband can stomach anything.

If you are fairly proficient at reading Katakana, you will be able to make out everything on the drink menu. If you know both Hiragana and Katakana, you can read about 90% of the sushi and sashimi list. I have taken some Japanese classes in college, and I was able to read everything I wanted to on the menu, albeit slowly! There was some kanji that I didn't completely remember, but it is pretty self explanatory what it means.

If you are calling to make a reservation, I think it would help to know some Japanese, but you could probably get away with just leaving your name, a time, and the number of people in English.




Directions:

Kaisen Sumibiyaki Shinsenmaru is located on top of the Lawson convenience store on the corner of Route 75 and Route 8.

From Courtney, simply hang a left onto Route 75, and continue until you see the Lawson at Route 8. You can turn straight into the Lawson parking lot, just be careful not to park in the marked "Lawson Customer" spots. (The first letter in Lawson in Japanese looks like an empty square box.) Or use the valet.

From McTureous, take a right on Route 8 immediately out the gate. The Izakaya will be on the left immediately after KFC.

From Foster or Kadena, make your way to Route 330, and head north. Route 330 will turn into Route 75 as you enter Uruma city, so just continue straight until you see signs for Route 8. The restaurant will be on the left, so turn onto Route 8, and then hang the first right into the parking lot.


Map:

View Kaisen Sumibiyaki Shinsenmaru in a larger map