Warning! This idea comes from Mr. Sato.

As you probably know by now, willpower, as it pertains to gacha capsule toys, isn’t our strong suit here at SoraNews24. Our inability to resist the urge to buy all the cool and quirky trinkets we encounter is one of the reasons Mr. Sato’s pockets are always stuffed with 100-yen coins every time he goes out (the other is that the jangling noise from all that loose change makes it easier for us to find him if he gets lost).

So when Mr. Sato spotted a capsule machine selling miniature, and moving, revolving sushi figurines, he quickly slipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out four hundred-yen coins, and fed them into the machine.

The clever round design means that the bottom half of the capsule itself forms the base of the toy. With only two variations in the series, this is about as risk-free as gacha toys get, since the only difference is in their color and the types of sushi replicas included.

Mr. Sato’s white version came with five plates for his little pieces of salmon, chutoro (fatty tuna), inari (fried tofu), tamago (egg) and nama ebi (raw shrimp).

You also get a little sign listing the types of sushi, like the ones at real-life revolving kaitenzushi (revolving sushi) restaurants, plus a pair of tiny chopsticks. Why chopsticks? Because Spinning Panic Kaitenzushi, as manufacturer Yell calls it, isn’t just a toy, but a game too! Wind the figurine up, and the plates start moving around, and you’re supposed to use your chopsticks to try to grab the pieces without dropping them.

It’s a clever and cute idea, even if it’s a little different from how you’re supposed to do things at a real revolving sushi restaurant, where you use your hands to take the plate off the belt, and only then use your chopsticks to pick up the sushi pieces. Really, though, Mr. Sato was happiest just looking at the little sushi going around and around in circles. Maybe it’s because he loves going to revolving sushi restaurants, or maybe the circular motion had some sort of hypnotic quality, but whatever the reason, he felt content and relaxed watching it…until he started to feel hungry.

“Man, it’d be so great to have revolving sushi at home,” murmured Mr. Sato, and once he’d vocalized that ambition, it was only a matter of moments until his natural genius kicked into high gear. Thankfully, he just so happened to have picked up some sushi at the market. The problem, though, was that it wasn’t revolving.

Look at it, just sitting there motionless. How could Mr. Sato be expected to enjoy such stationary sushi? So he tore off a short piece of plastic wrap, placed it on top of his revolving sushi figurine…

…wound it up, and presto! He was now enjoying revolving sushi in the comfort of his own home!

The only drawback was that no matter how long he waited, a different piece wasn’t going to come out. That wasn’t really such a big problem, though, because the solution was obvious: eat the sushi (come to think of it, “eat sushi” is the first method we try for overcoming any challenge life throws at us).

Once he’d eaten his first piece of revolving sushi, Mr. Sato was ready for more.

He even had some fancy ikura (salmon roe).

Now, we should point out that there are other, less delusional ways to get the revolving sushi experience at home. Those require reservations and prior planning, though, so Mr. Sato is happy to have a way to turn any sushi meal into a revolving one in mere seconds. And who knows? Sometimes he might even use his capsule toy the way it’s intended to be used too.

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