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Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long?

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Re: Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long?

#51

Post by astrange »

MrJagil wrote: post #14
redcups wrote: post #8

Semi-related: "Jiro Dreams of Sushi", a excelent 90minute documentary movie about "Jiro", an 85-year-old sushi master is available on YouTube w/ english subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYN7p8dvr64 Great watch, even if you never had sushi or don't like sushi. The extreme drive for perfection is admirable.

Yes, it's an excellent film. Makes you yearn for sushi, though you quickly realize that whatever sushi is in your vicinity, is not what you're actually craving; it's a taste of Jiro's mastery. Apparently, Tampopo is in a similar vein (though fiction) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092048/?ref_=fn_al_tt_9

Keep in mind that Sushi Jiro isn't even in the top 10 (or 20?) ranked places in Tokyo on tabelog, although the low reviews might be since Jiro is so rude to everyone who comes in, especially the foreigners.

Sushi Sawada is a 3 Michelin star place in Tokyo run by a former truck driver who's studied for less than ten years.

http://www.andyhayler.com/restaurant/sushi-sawada

Re: Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long?

#52

Post by ejstronge »

blue11 wrote: post #46
ejstronge wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any accredited, MD-granting US medical school that don't require an undergraduate degree prior to matriculation - do you have examples? There are accelerated bachelors+MD programs that high schoolers can apply to; these would shave off two years of overall training time. Notably, despite being accelerated programs, these grant a bachelors degree before program participants advance to medical school.

Technically, most US medical schools don't require an undergraduate degree. However, the amount of coursework required is so large (about 3 years) that it makes sense to do a little bit extra work and get the BS anyway. It's good to have a BS degree in case you don't get into medical school.

I'm still curious about specifics - can you link to a US, MD-granting institution that doesn't require an undergraduate degree?

EDIT: I'm aware that this used to be the case but I don't believe that any schools still allow this.

Re: Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long?

#53

Post by rifung »

stephengillie wrote: post #49
rifung wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably do, but I also imagine that a lot of things just can't be taught and instead come from experience. For example, I used to train with an Olympic gold medalist in badminton, and he would tell me that the thing I really need to bring my playing to the next level is to be able to take risks and gamble by predicting what the opponent was going to do. The theory made complete sense: you just need to be able t…

I can understand part of it is muscle memory, and part is experience in the space. To compare with welding: Seasoned welders discuss heating and cooling a weld, pulling from top or bottom, dragging this molten liquid around the narrow crack between metal pieces, and how using different techniques can fine-tune a weld, making it easier to grind and make invisible. From another angle, at 40 hours per week, it takes ove…

I both agree and disagree. I imagine most people could tell the difference between an 8th year and 3rd year sushi chef. 3 years seems like such a short amount of time for something as complex as making sushi.

On the other hand, I also can see that when people reach a very high level of skill, it may be difficult for normal people to really see the differences in skill. But I don't know if you can really say there's only a marginal difference.

After all, if one person is 10000 miles away and another is 11000 miles away, they both are so far away you can barely see them. Indeed, I imagine they may be so far away you can't tell how far apart they are, or even which one is farther! But the reality is that one of them is 10% farther than the other: hardly a marginal difference.

Still I do agree that non connoisseurs probably would have difficulty truly appreciating the difference in skill.

Re: Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long?

#54

Post by tgb »

amit_m wrote: post #45
tgb wrote: post #13

Can a blinded panel pick out top quality sushi? I hear sommeliers can't do so for wine, often failing to do well even at identifying red versus white. My first cynical guess for why the education is so long is that customers will pay more for it, regardless of whether or not the product itself benefits. Then again, I barely eat sushi.

Would you be able to tell apart a pizza from a top italian restaurant and a microwaved instant pizza? The differences between top-grade sushi and bad sushi are just as obvious, you really don't need to be an expert. By the way, in japan there is a highly developed market for fish with many levels of quality, so the expensive restaurants get the best parts of the best fish and the leftovers end up in cheaper places.

I think a better test wouldn't be whether or not there is sushi-so-bad-you-can-tell, it's whether a chef with 2 years of training can make sushi indistinguishable from a chef with 15 years of training. The pizza equivalent is quite different from what you suggest. That's not what I had originally thought of though, so your example is definitely a good point. I'm pretty sure I, at least, would be hard pressed to tell the pizza equivalent of guessing the less experienced chef.

Also, both chefs should get access to the same ingredients to test if the training is the important part.

Re: Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long?

#55

Post by Daishiman »

tgb wrote: post #13

Can a blinded panel pick out top quality sushi? I hear sommeliers can't do so for wine, often failing to do well even at identifying red versus white. My first cynical guess for why the education is so long is that customers will pay more for it, regardless of whether or not the product itself benefits. Then again, I barely eat sushi.

> I hear sommeliers can't do so for wine, often failing to do well even at identifying red versus white.

This is a tremendous misreading of a study of dubious quality.

I have a few friends who have studied to be sommeliers. The training is intense and the exams arduous. There are several hundreds of different flavor profiles that have to be understood and picked out in real wines (and they map with objective chemical profiles). There is character in the wine that comes from specific characteristics of the regions and seasonality. And the tests to be a sommelier require months of study and are based on objective criteria.

Re: Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long?

#56

Post by bkeroack »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #26
stephengillie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of forcing a person thru a decade of trials in the dojo, and promoting those that manage to learn how to pass the trials one way or another - we took the successful people and had them teach how to be successful. It's so much more efficient this way. It might still take 5 years of training for someone to have masterful control over her or his body, but so long as they obey and work hard, success will come eve…

It's a more powerful reinforcement schedule (B. F. Skinner) than the old " wait for years and _maybe_ get a payoff " way, making students more motivated and aware of their mistakes.

The real reason is that giving a grade promotion to a young child every few weeks keeps them entertained and happy, which keeps their parents happy and therefore ensures that tuition money keeps coming in and new students continue to sign up. The integrity of the art is almost entirely irrelevant to most of these McDojo-style martial arts schools.

Re: Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long?

#57

Post by mercer »

diminoten2 wrote: post #39
bane wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Satori is translated into English as "understanding in fullness". 'Grok' has always seemed to mean to me something kind of like this, where no further epiphanies are possible.

Except grok simply means to comprehend/understand something to the level of competence. I've never heard of anyone using grok to mean something along the lines of "mastery".

For me it's somewhere in between 'competence' and 'mastery', but really slightly different from both. I suppose that's why the term exists separate from 'competence' and 'mastery'.

I'd say 'grok' generally means that you truly understand something in a fundamental way, rather than just being 'competent' or 'masterful' at that thing. It's a crucial step on the path to mastery, but mastery might still require a lot of practice.

I find 'Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi [1]' to be a classic example of proper usage. It explains fundamental principles of vim's 'grammar'. Once you've read and understood it, you 'grok' vim. But even though this knowledge is crucial in being a 'master', it does not make you one. That would require a lot of practice (in this particular case, for me, a few weeks).

I've had similar experiences with functional programming. There was a point, after much reading, where I felt that I truly 'grokked' the approach, but I'm still far away from being a master at functional programming. Old imperative habits die hard.

[1]:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most...

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