Yes to each of those assertions, dear reader. After all, it's basically grilled meat, seafood and vegetables. OK, so you're sitting on a fairly uncomfortable chair facing the flat, metal, wood-bordered grill table with seven other people. At first, you watch the cook with fascination. Moves things swiftly around on the hot flat metal surface, dribbles cooking oil and various sauces.
Tosses shrimp and steak around as easily as a circus performer juggles tennis balls.
Then you notice that all the banging and ratatat-tatting of the cook's knives and long forks against the table are superfluous and pretty darned annoying, that his waving of salt and pepper canisters is wasted motion. The shrimp appetizer consists of five or six pieces of shrimp hot from the grill, but you notice that cooking has left the pink crustaceans rather dry. And you notice something else. While Japanese cuisine is noted for its sparing use of fats and oils, the cook keeps putting butter on everything. I began to grow alarmed.