# Tokyo Sushi Academy Tokyo Japan - Beware!



## tvik (Dec 13, 2017)

They teach you how to pass their unrecognized, worthless certification test for $10,000+. You waste most of your time leaning to cut daikon radish, taking useless speed tests you have not had enough time to practice, and waiting around doing nothing. They do not teach you more than making rice & forming nigiri. They don't teach you about fish quality and freshness and you don't get that much practice breaking down whole fish as they promise. You do spend time cleaning their kitchen and grease traps. If you take the English version of the class don't count on the translators, only 1 out of 3 of them actually translated what the Japanese speaking only teachers were saying. It is a total ripoff. you have been warned.


I paid $10,000 for the 2 month sushi class at the Tokyo Sushi Academy. The class is not geared towards teaching you about sushi. It is geared towards passing their sushi certification test. Their certification is contrived of some arbitrary speed tests, not really recognized by their own admission even in Tokyo.

They say you will break down whole fish every day. Not true. Most days fish was already fillets and taken out of plastic vacuum packed packages. The fish you concentrate on for half the class and the certification test is a horse mackerel that is ONLY popular in Tokyo, not even in other parts of Japan. The main focus is not even on the most popular way to prepare it.

They test you on making 18 pieces of nigiri sushi in 3 minutes. They wastes weeks on this. You practice 3 rounds of this test for weeks. You make the nigiri for 3 minutes then spend an hour waiting for the teacher to go around and check everyone's work. Then you clean up, including their grease traps and you are done for the day. They start testing you by the 2nd or 3rd week, not even enough time to acquire real technique before testing for speed.

Only one of the 3 translators actually tried to translate completely. We we lucky if the other translators even translated 20% of what the instructors was saying. Often they would skip translating anything at all especially when the 2 Japanese students had conversations with the instructors 100% in Japanese in front of the rest of the class during our class time. Don't know why they were even there.

They don't teach anything about the different tyes of fish, their flavors, what to pair them with and absolutely nothing about how to tell quality and freshness of the fish.

This school is a TOTAL waste of TIME and MONEY. Avoid it. You can learn more from youtube.


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## dectra (Nov 2, 2016)

Yikes!

Sound like a proprietary school I took classes in years ago, albeit for less money.

The only "up side" in my case was that I could parlay that after a few weeks into an entry level job - where they DID teach me what I needed for a solid foundation.


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## nicko (Oct 5, 2001)

@tvik thanks for sharing this I am curious didn't you speak with other students prior to attending the school? Can you tell us more about how you researched the school and why you choose it. It is good for awareness to other prospective students about your experience but it would be great to understand the mistakes you made in researching so others don't make the same mistake.


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