My favorite thing we did in Tokyo was to take a sushi class together. I’d always been very intimidated by sushi, but we went for it and arrived on a Tuesday afternoon. We were welcomed by our two instructors who introduced themselves and showed us where to stow our shoes. Another couple was a no show so it ended up being a private class, and we learned a lot. We started by making dashi— a soup that is a stock ingredient in several of the dishes. Dashi is made by boiling kelp and a grated dried fish that looked and smelled like tropical fish food, not exactly ingredients I cook with everyday. With the dashi finished, we moved on to our egg roll.

She looks concerned, but it turned out perfectly!

This was basically a sweetened omelette folded into a square to be cut into thin sticks and used in and on different rolls. Both of ours turned out alright, so we were good to proceed to our skinny rolls.

Here is where it really got fun for me; she showed us how to assemble the inside of our rolls before folding the seaweed wrapper and tucking it for a seamless roll.

Next we tried the west coast twist with a California roll. Basically, the seaweed is on the inside, but we tuck and roll with plastic wrap to keep the shape.

Finally, we moved on to the nagiri rolls– basically rice balls with thin cuts of meat on top.

While I think my rolls might have looked prettier, Alex’s plating was also super impressive when we finished.

A major perk of a cooking class is that at the end, you have a delicious result. After taking our pictures, we tucked in and filled our bellies with the fruits of our labor. I really loved the experience and hope to do another class the next time we travel!