100 Fun Facts About Sushi Trivia for Kids

Sushi comes from which country?

It started as a way of keeping fish from going bad, and became a fast food in the city of Edo, now Tokyo.

Which ingredient is in every kind of sushi?

Lots of sushi has no fish at all. The special sticky rice, mixed with vinegar, sugar and salt, is what makes it sushi.

What does the word 'sushi' actually mean in Japanese?

The sour taste comes from the vinegar in the rice, so 'sushi' never meant 'raw seafood' even though many people think it does.

Thin slices of raw fish served WITHOUT rice are called what?

People often mix the two up, but if there is no rice it is not sushi.

What is the dark green wrapper around a sushi roll made from?

It is called nori and is a type of red algae that is farmed in the sea, then dried into sheets a bit like paper.

Nori sheets are made using a drying process that is most like making what?

The seaweed is shredded, spread out on racks and dried into thin flat sheets, which is why it snaps and crinkles like paper.

Which kind of rice do sushi chefs use?

It needs to be sticky so it holds together in a ball or a roll. Long-grain rice like basmati just falls apart.

What green paste is served with sushi that makes your nose tingle?

Real wasabi is grated from the stem of a plant that grows beside mountain streams in Japan.

The real spicy green paste served with sushi comes from a plant related to which other food?

Most 'wasabi' outside Japan is really horseradish, mustard powder and green food colouring, because true wasabi is hard to grow.

Most of the spicy paste served with sushi outside Japan is really made from what?

The real plant is expensive, so cheaper restaurants use an imitation made from horseradish, mustard powder and colouring.

What is the pink stuff on the side of a sushi plate?

It is called gari. You eat a little between different pieces of sushi to clean the taste from your mouth.

Which salty brown liquid do people dip sushi into?

Sushi chefs say you should dip the fish side, not the rice, or the rice soaks up too much and falls apart.

Soy sauce is made mainly from which bean?

The beans are fermented with roasted grain and salty water for months, which is where the strong savoury taste comes from.

Which is the polite, traditional way to eat a piece of nigiri sushi?

Even at fancy restaurants in Japan, picking nigiri up with your hands is fine.

Which country did chopsticks come from originally?

They spread from China to Japan, Korea and Vietnam and have been used for more than 3,000 years.

Nigiri sushi is a small mound of rice with a topping. How does the chef shape the rice?

Nigiri means 'hand-pressed'. A good chef can shape one in a couple of seconds.

Sushi that is rolled up in nori and cut into pieces is called what?

Makizushi means 'rolled sushi'. A roll is usually cut into six or eight bite-sized pieces.

What is the little bamboo mat used for rolling sushi called?

It is woven from bamboo sticks and cotton string, and it also gets used to shape rolled omelettes.

A big cone-shaped roll that you hold in your hand is called what?

Temaki means 'hand roll'. You should eat it quickly, before the seaweed cone goes soggy.

A cucumber roll is called kappamaki after a Japanese water goblin. What food does the kappa love?

In old stories the kappa lives in rivers and has a dish of water on its head; people leave it cucumbers at festivals.

An 'inside-out' roll has what on the outside instead of nori?

It is called uramaki and was invented in America to hide the seaweed from people who thought it looked strange.

A California roll is usually filled with cucumber, avocado and what?

The very first ones used real crab. The 'crab sticks' used now are made of mashed white fish shaped to look like crab.

The orange-and-white 'crab sticks' sold in supermarkets are really made from what?

The fish paste is called surimi. It is coloured on one side to look like real crab leg meat.

A Philadelphia roll gets its name from which ingredient?

It is usually smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber, and it is much more popular in America than in Japan.

Which fish did Norway persuade Japan to start eating raw on sushi in the 1980s?

Wild salmon can have worms, so the Japanese always cooked it. Fat, farmed Norwegian salmon changed their minds.

Unagi (freshwater eel) is never served raw on sushi. How is it usually cooked?

Eel blood is poisonous until it is cooked, so it is grilled and brushed with a sticky sauce called tare, a style known as kabayaki.

Which is the most prized and expensive part of a tuna for sushi?

The very fattiest cut is called otoro and often comes from giant bluefin tuna.

Sweet omelette on sushi is called tamago. What does 'tamago' mean?

Tamagoyaki is made by rolling up lots of thin layers of egg in a special square frying pan.

Which sushi is a pouch of fried tofu filled with rice, named after a god whose messengers are foxes?

Foxes are supposed to love fried tofu, and in some places the pouches are folded with pointy corners like fox ears.

Sushi rice served in a bowl with toppings scattered on top is called what?

Chirashi means 'scattered'. Japanese families often eat it on Children's Day in May.

Japanese rice balls wrapped in nori, often triangle-shaped and eaten as a snack, are called what?

They are not really sushi because the rice is plain, not vinegared. They are the Japanese sandwich.

Which chef is said to have invented modern hand-pressed sushi in Edo (Tokyo) around 1824?

His pieces were about three times bigger than today's, and it was sold as fast food from street stalls.

Some sushi restaurants send the plates past you on a moving belt. What gave the inventor the idea?

Yoshiaki Shiraishi couldn't find enough staff for his little restaurant, saw the bottles moving at a brewery, and opened the first belt restaurant in 1958.

At a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, how is the bill usually worked out?

Each colour of plate is a different price, so the waiter just stacks them up and counts.

Which drink is almost always served with sushi in Japan?

In sushi-bar slang the tea is called agari. It goes well with fish and cleans your mouth between bites.

Which small green pods of young beans are a popular snack at sushi restaurants?

You squeeze the beans out of the salty pod with your teeth and leave the pod behind.

Miso soup, often served with sushi, is flavoured with a paste made from what?

The paste is stirred into a broth called dashi, often with cubes of tofu and bits of seaweed floating in it.

Tempura was brought to Japan by people from which country?

Portuguese missionaries in the 1500s fried vegetables in batter during Lent, and the Japanese loved the idea.

Fugu, or pufferfish, is a famous but risky Japanese dish. Why is it dangerous?

Only specially licensed chefs who pass a hard exam are allowed to prepare it, and only about a third of them pass.

Which Japanese lunchbox with rice and little compartments is sometimes decorated to look like cartoon characters?

Character bentos are called kyaraben, and there are even competitions for the best ones.

How many players can play the original Sushi Go! card game?

Each round you pick one card and pass the rest to your neighbour, and there is a dice version called Sushi Roll.

Which Tokyo sushi chef was the subject of a famous 2011 documentary about his tiny restaurant?

His tiny restaurant is in a Tokyo subway station, and his two sons became sushi chefs too.

What is the nori-wrapped rice 'boat' for loose sushi toppings like fish eggs called?

It was invented at a Tokyo restaurant in 1941 and made it possible to serve soft things like sea urchin and salmon roe.

Which country's sushi is famous for putting a soft white cheese spread in almost everything?

Japanese chefs would never do it, but in Brazil it is the most common sushi ingredient of all.

Japan is made up of how many big main islands?

Plus more than 14,000 little ones. Being surrounded by sea is one reason fish is such a big part of Japanese food.

Where does the wasabi plant grow naturally in Japan?

It hates direct sun and needs cool, damp conditions, which is why real wasabi is rare and expensive.

Long ago, the very first sushi was invented as a way to do what with fish?

Fish was packed in rice to preserve it; people only started eating the rice too hundreds of years later.

Scientists won a funny science prize in 2011 for a wasabi-smell alarm designed to wake up whom?

Sniffing wasabi is like smelling salts, so the alarm puffs it into the air instead of making noise.

In which American city did the first sushi shop in the United States open, in 1906?

It was in the Little Tokyo neighbourhood, after many Japanese families had moved to America.

Before which invention did people in Japan avoid eating raw salmon?

Raw salmon could carry parasites, so keeping fish cold was the key to making it safe.

On the festival of Setsubun, people eat a whole uncut sushi roll while doing what?

The roll is called ehōmaki, the 'lucky direction roll', and the direction changes every year. It started in the Kansai region and spread after convenience stores began selling it.

A lucky ehōmaki roll is traditionally stuffed with how many ingredients?

Seven is a lucky number in Japan because of the Seven Gods of Fortune. Typical fillings are dried gourd, egg, eel and shiitake mushroom.

Pressed 'box sushi' made in a wooden mould is a speciality of which Japanese city?

The mould is called an oshibako. Toppings go in first, rice on top, then the lid is pressed down and the block is cut into neat bites.

In Nara, a kind of pressed sushi is wrapped in the leaves of which fruit tree?

It is called kakinohazushi, from kaki, the Japanese word for persimmon. The leaves keep the sushi fresh and add a faint sweet smell.

Fish-in-rice sushi probably began in the rivers of which region, long before Japan?

It may have started around the Mekong River. Fish packed in rice kept for months, and the first written mention is in a Chinese dictionary about 1,600 years old.

Gunkanmaki, the nori-wrapped sushi for soft toppings, is named for what kind of ship?

Look at one from the side and the strip of nori does look like the hull of a battleship, with the topping as the deck.

Temarizushi is made by pressing rice and fish into which shape?

Temari are traditional Japanese hand balls, and the sushi is squeezed into shape inside a sheet of plastic wrap, so it is easy to make at home.

A fat futomaki roll is usually about how wide?

That is about the width of a tennis ball. Futomaki usually hold two, three or more fillings picked to look good together.

Thin hosomaki rolls usually contain how many fillings?

They are only about 2.5 cm across, so there is room for one thing: cucumber, tuna, dried gourd or pickled plum paste.

Tekkamaki tuna rolls started out as a quick snack for people busy doing what?

A tekkaba was a gambling den, and the roll could be eaten one-handed without leaving the game, much like the story of the sandwich.

The Japanese word ikura, for salmon eggs, was borrowed from which language?

In Russian, ikra just means fish eggs of any kind. In Japan the orange eggs are usually soaked in soy sauce before going on sushi.

Crunchy orange tobiko on sushi rolls is the eggs of which sea animal?

Each egg is less than a millimetre across. Chefs sometimes dye it black, green or pale yellow using natural ingredients such as yuzu.

Uni, the creamy orange sushi topping, comes from which spiky animal?

The spiky shell is cracked open and the soft orange parts inside are lifted out. Japan imports lots of it from the United States and South Korea.

Japan eats roughly what share of all the uni harvested in the world?

That is around 50,000 tonnes a year, so much that scientists worry about overfishing.

Tako, a chewy sushi topping, is octopus. How many arms does an octopus have?

The name comes from Greek words for 'eight' and 'foot'. An octopus usually walks on its back two arms and uses the other six to find food.

On a sushi menu, 'ika' is which sea creature?

It is usually served raw and is so slippery that the chef ties it to the rice with a thin belt of nori.

What is 'ebi' on a sushi menu?

Most ebi is cooked and opened out flat. Raw sweet shrimp is called amaebi and is often served with its crispy fried head on the side.

Hamachi (yellowtail) gets a new Japanese name once it is fully grown. What is it?

The fish is renamed as it grows, from mojako fry to hamachi at about 3 kg to buri at about 5 kg. It is a winter favourite when the meat is fattiest.

Japan has a special summer day for eating grilled eel. It is named after which animal?

Midsummer Ox Day falls in the hottest part of the year, when rich, fatty eel is supposed to give you energy to beat the heat.

Unlike most fish, tuna are unusual because they can do what?

Special blood vessels trap heat in the muscles, so a bluefin can swim in cold water and still have the power for bursts of speed.

In 2019, how much did a sushi boss pay for one tuna at Tokyo's first auction of the year?

That was about 3 million US dollars for a 278 kg Pacific bluefin. The buyer, Kiyoshi Kimura, runs the Sushi Zanmai chain and is nicknamed the Tuna King.

In Australia and New Zealand, conveyor belt sushi places are often called a 'sushi' what?

Some restaurants take the name literally and deliver plates on miniature train cars running on a track.

At conveyor belt sushi bars, the priciest dishes usually come on plates of which colour?

Plain plates are the cheapest and the fancier the pattern, the higher the price. Some chains charge a flat 100 yen for every plate instead.

Some conveyor belt restaurants float the sushi past you in little wooden what?

The boats drift along a small water canal that winds past the seats, and you lift your plate off as it sails by.

At the chain Kura Sushi, feeding empty plates into a slot at your table can win you what?

Every few plates triggers a little animation on the screen and sometimes a capsule toy. Kura has also decorated restaurants with Sonic the Hedgehog and Hello Kitty.

British conveyor belt chain YO! Sushi opened its first restaurant in 1997 in which city?

It opened in Soho, and its founder Simon Woodroffe had never run a restaurant before. Its second branch was inside the Harvey Nichols department store.

In which 2003 spy comedy does the hero get his tie stuck in a sushi conveyor belt?

The scene was filmed in a real YO! Sushi restaurant. Rowan Atkinson's clumsy spy went on to star in two sequels.

In Sushi Go!: Spin Some for Dim Sum, what do you spend to spin the table of baskets?

The game has a real spinning table with six baskets on it, and you keep taking the top card from whichever basket stops in front of you.

Which US state is famous for Spam musubi, a block of rice topped with grilled Spam?

You can buy them beside the till in almost any Hawaiian corner shop.

Korean gimbap rolls look like sushi, but their rice is seasoned with what, not vinegar?

Gimbap is Korea's favourite picnic food. In 2023 frozen gimbap sold out at Trader Joe's stores in America within weeks.

A standard sheet of nori weighs only about how much?

A sheet is roughly 18 by 20 cm, about the size of a paperback book, yet it weighs less than a sugar cube. Japan makes about 350,000 tonnes of nori a year.

How is nori seaweed farmed at sea?

Farmers work from boats and the first crop is ready about 45 days after seeding, with new harvests every ten days or so.

British scientist Kathleen Drew-Baker is honoured in Japan as 'Mother of the' what?

Her 1949 discovery of how the seaweed reproduces rescued Japan's failing nori farms, even though she never visited the country.

Uto, Japan honours nori scientist Kathleen Drew-Baker on the 14th of which month?

The Drew Festival has been held since 1953 at a shrine overlooking the nori fields of the Ariake Sea, where a monument to her stands.

Traditionally, fresh wasabi is grated on a board covered with the skin of which animal?

The rough skin works like fine sandpaper and makes a smoother paste. Most chefs now use a metal grater called an oroshigane.

Where does a sushi chef usually tuck the wasabi in a piece of nigiri?

Hiding it there keeps the flavour from fading, because grated wasabi loses its kick quickly once it is left out in the air.

The world's largest wasabi farm, Daio, is in which Japanese prefecture?

The farm in Azumino needs no fertiliser because the water flowing through it picks up nutrients from rice paddies upstream.

Expert diners once ordered the egg sushi first at a new restaurant. Why?

Sweet rolled omelette is tricky to get right, so one bite told a regular whether the chef was any good. In sushi slang it is called gyoku.

A sushi chef is called an itamae, which literally means 'in front of the' what?

Trainees spend years washing rice and prepping ingredients before they are allowed to stand at the board themselves.

If you order 'omakase' at a sushi bar, what are you asking for?

The word means 'I leave it up to you'. The chef serves one piece at a time, choosing whatever is best that day.

In 2014 which US president ate at Jiro Ono's tiny sushi bar with Japan's prime minister?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his guest called it the best sushi he had ever eaten, though reports disagree on whether he finished it all.

Jiro Ono's famous restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro has how many seats?

Every seat is at the counter, and Jiro notices whether you are left- or right-handed before deciding where you sit.

In Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the staff soften an octopus before serving by doing what to it?

They rub it by hand for 45 minutes, having decided that the old half-hour was not quite enough to make the meat tender.

The pile of thin white strands served under sashimi is usually shredded what?

The garnish is called tsuma and can also include cucumber, carrot, seaweed or a leaf of the herb shiso.

The green plastic 'grass' in takeaway sushi boxes replaced what from the 1960s?

Chefs used to cut fresh leaves into decorative shapes by hand. Today the plastic mostly stops the wasabi and ginger touching the rolls.

Compared with Chinese chopsticks, the tips of Japanese chopsticks are usually what?

Pointed tips help pick bones out of fish. In Japanese they are called hashi, and kitchen chopsticks for cooking can be 30 cm long.

Disposable Japanese waribashi chopsticks come joined together. What must you do first?

The wood is only partly cut through, and splitting it yourself proves nobody has used the pair before.

In the United States, fish served raw in sushi must first be what, to kill parasites?

Deep-freezing kills the tiny worms that can live in wild fish, so most 'fresh' sushi fish in America has actually been frozen solid first.

A 'caterpillar roll' gets its bumpy green look from thin slices of what on top?

The slices overlap like scales along the whole roll. It is an American invention and almost never seen in Japan.

A rainbow roll is an inside-out roll topped with what to give it many colours?

Stripes of several kinds of fish are laid side by side over a California roll, so every piece comes out a different colour.