Restaurants in Japan

Today I met up with a friend of mine from college (we sang in the same group) who lives in Tokyo. (he's Japanese, but went to Middle School in the US). With him, I ventured into a more traditional Japanese restaurant for lunch, and got to experience "belt sushi" for the first time.

Basically, in the restaurant, there is moving conveyor belt with little plates of sushi (by sushi I mostly mean nigiri, meaning rice and fish, as opposed to maki, which is rolled up in seaweed, as we traditionally think of sushi in the US.)

It looked like this:
Now, here's the best part. The color and design of the plate each indicated the cost of each item (click on the picture above to enlarge and see in more detail).

But wait, there's more. Each plate had a magnet on the bottom:

Such that when you were finished, a waiter could scan a stack of plates (he didn't have to do each one individually):

And then print your bill from a second small device on his belt. Amazing!

Oh, and did I mention that the sushi was excellent?