Sushi Yoko and Tomato

Every morning when we drive by this place on our way to work, I am always puzzled by its strange sign which says "Tomato and Sushi Yoko".

The "Tomato" word is written in hiragana and the "Sushi Yoko" words are written as they are shown.

I have wondered how tomato is related to this Sushi Yoko.

Well, a few days ago, I found my answer.

Tomato is actually a Japanese grocery store and Sushi Yoko is a Japanese restaurant.
Both of them are located in the same "warehouse" like building which is very eccentric.

The entrance of the building has the Suite # of Tomato on the right hand side and the Suite # of Sushi Yoko on the left hand side. It's very confusing.

After entering the building, a long hallway leads downwards to the entrance of Tomato and the entrance of Sushi Yoko.

There are "day-care" type of paintings on the wall along the hallway.
The wall is actually painted with tomato figures and cartoon characters. If I weren't told that this is a sushi place, I would definitely have guessed that this place is a daycare centre.

The Tomato grocery store has all kinds of Japanese magazines, DVD's, drinks, and foods that you would normally see in a typical Japanese store. This reminds me of Vancouver and Taiwan.

The clerk at the check-out counter actually spoke Japanese to me when I was paying for my stuff. This is very odd.... either I looked like a Japanese tonight (which is usually not the case because I am pretty sure that I don't look like a Japanese) or that clerk just likes speaking Japanese to all non-Caucasian people who visit their store. Either she expects all Asians to know some Japanese or the crappy Japanese imperialism ideology is screwing the shit out of her mind.

Sushi Yoko is operated by pure Japanese, I guess, because the main chefs are real Japanese, unlike those other "counterfeit" Japanese restaurants commonly seen in North America.

The chefts are from Tokyo... because I was "secretly" listening to the conversation between them and customers.

The food is great. I ordered sushi and sashimi tonight and they are excellent. I haven't had sashimi for almost a year now, so I am glad to eat them "raw".... haha

I had ramen last Thursday:

寄件者 Atlanta -- Jan 2009

This is what I ate tonight:

寄件者 Atlanta -- Jan 2009