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58 free Hard Sushi trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This is the hard version of our sushi quiz. If you already know that nigiri was Edo-period fast food and that wasabi is usually horseradish in disguise, these 58 questions go further: which Tokyo ward houses Toyosu Market, why Sukiyabashi Jiro vanished from the Michelin Guide, which British scientist rescued Japan's nori industry, and what Kansai diners mean when they call fugu a 'gun'. The set covers sushi history from the Yoro Code of 718 to the first American sushi bar, the fish (bluefin, yellowtail, uni, conger eel), the tools (yanagiba, hangiri, makisu), the markets and record-breaking tuna auctions, and the chefs and chains that shaped modern sushi from Ginza to Los Angeles. Expect questions pitched at people who eat a lot of sushi and read about it too. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopedic source before publishing, and each question carries its citation. Want a warm-up first? Try the main BrainPickle sushi trivia quiz, then come back for this one.
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Q 01Why was Sukiyabashi Jiro dropped from the Michelin Guide in November 2019?
It does not take reservations from the general public
Michelin said it does not take reservations from the general public: Jiro accepts bookings only through luxury-hotel concierges, so the three-star Ginza counter no longer met the guide's listing rules.
Q 02Which US president ate at Sukiyabashi Jiro with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama dined at Sukiyabashi Jiro with Shinzo Abe on the first night of his April 2014 state visit; Abe said Obama called it the best sushi he had ever eaten.
Q 03Who directed the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi?
David Gelb
Gelb had originally planned a multi-chef film nicknamed 'Planet Sushi'; he later created the Netflix series Chef's Table.
Q 04Whose minimalist compositions dominate the soundtrack of Jiro Dreams of Sushi?
Philip Glass
The director said the repetitive, escalating music was a metaphor for a chef doing the same routine daily while reaching for one more step of improvement.
Q 05A 2013 fire at Sukiyabashi Jiro was traced to what?
Straw used to smoke bonito
A chef had returned the straw to the storeroom, where it most likely ignited. It took about an hour to put out and nobody was hurt.
Q 06Which critic gave Sushi Nakazawa a perfect four-star New York Times review in 2013?
Pete Wells
Pete Wells awarded Sushi Nakazawa four stars in December 2013, months after it opened; owner Alessandro Borgognone had recruited Daisuke Nakazawa after watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Q 07Kiyoshi Kimura, the 'Tuna King' of Japan's New Year auction, founded which chain?
Sushi Zanmai
Kimura's Kiyomura Corporation runs the Sushi Zanmai chain; he repeatedly topped the New Year tuna auction, paying 155.4 million yen for a 222 kg bluefin in 2013.
Q 08Near which town was the record 333.6 million yen bluefin of 2019 caught?
Ōma
Ōma, at the northern tip of Aomori Prefecture, is famous for line-caught bluefin. The winning bid worked out to roughly $5,000 a pound.
Q 09Toyosu, the fish market that replaced Tsukiji, sits in which Tokyo ward?
Kōtō
Toyosu Market lies in Kōtō ward on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay; at about 408,000 square metres it is nearly twice the size of old Tsukiji.
Q 10What had previously occupied the Toyosu site, whose toxic soil delayed Tokyo's fish market move by two years?
A gas plant
The site had been a Tokyo Gas plant; Tokyo spent an extra 3.8 billion yen on wells to pump out contaminated groundwater before the market finally opened in October 2018.
Q 11Tsukiji fish market opened in 1935 to replace an older market that had been destroyed by what?
The 1923 Kantō earthquake
The 1923 Great Kantō earthquake destroyed Tokyo's old central fish market, which was already slated for relocation over its unsanitary conditions; the Tsukiji rebuild took over six years.
Q 12Before Tsukiji, in which district did Tokyo's fish market stand for centuries?
Nihonbashi
The Nihonbashi uogashi grew after Tokugawa Ieyasu brought fishermen from Tsukuda near Osaka to Edo in 1590 to supply the castle; whatever the castle did not buy was sold by the bridge.
Q 13Which British phycologist, honoured in Japan as the 'Mother of the Sea', rescued the post-war nori industry?
Q 21Japan's largest wholesale fugu market is in which city?
Shimonoseki
Shimonoseki's Haedomari market handles most of Japan's fugu; locals there say 'fuku', a homonym for good fortune, and hold an annual ceremony releasing hundreds of fugu into the sea.
Q 22In Kansai slang fugu is nicknamed 'teppō', a word meaning what?
Gun
Teppō means gun: the joke is that 'ataru', to be hit, also means to get food poisoning, so a fugu dinner can go off like a gunshot.
Q 23In which year did Japan's fugu deaths peak at 176, the same year chef licensing was introduced?
1958
176 people died of fugu poisoning in 1958, the year chef licensing began; applicants serve a two- or three-year apprenticeship and sit written, identification and practical exams that only about a third pass.
Kathleen Drew-Baker
Kathleen Drew-Baker's 1949 discovery that the shell-boring 'conchocelis' is a phase of Porphyra's life cycle let Japanese growers seed nori artificially; Uto in Kumamoto honours her with a monument and an April festival.
Q 14Sheet nori (ita-nori) was invented in Asakusa around 1750 by borrowing the method of which other craft?
Japanese paper-making
Edo-era makers adapted Japanese paper-making, spreading chopped nori on frames to dry into sheets; before that nori was eaten as a paste, and sheets made makizushi possible decades later.
Q 15The most prized 'shin-nori', from the first harvest of the year, is cultivated in which Japanese sea?
Ariake Sea
Ariake lies off Kyushu. Top-grade sheets can cost around 90 cents each in the US, versus about six cents for common Chinese-grown nori.
Q 16Most nori is made from red algae of which genus?
Pyropia
Pyropia yezoensis and Pyropia tenera, moved out of Porphyra in a 2011 reclassification, are the main nori species; farmed plants grow on nets at the sea surface and can be harvested about 45 days after seeding.
Q 17The 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to researchers who used wasabi vapour to build what?
A smoke alarm for the deaf
Sniffing wasabi acts like smelling salts; one deaf test subject woke within ten seconds of the vapour being sprayed into his sleeping chamber.
Q 18The Daio Wasabi Farm in Azumino, the world's largest commercial wasabi farm, is in which prefecture?
Nagano
Azumino lies in Nagano Prefecture; Daio's roughly 15 hectares of wasabi beds are fed by cold spring water from the Northern Japan Alps. Shizuoka's Izu Peninsula is the other great wasabi region.
Q 19Where do sushi chefs traditionally place the wasabi in a piece of nigiri, so its flavour is preserved?
Between the fish and the rice
Chefs tuck the wasabi between the fish and the rice, shielding it from air; fresh wasabi paste loses its punch within minutes, which is also why top restaurants grate it to order.
Q 20Kabuki actor Bandō Mitsugorō VIII died in 1975 after eating four servings of which part of a fugu?
The liver
Mitsugorō ate four servings of fugu liver, the organ where tetrodotoxin concentrates, claiming he could resist the poison; serving fugu liver in restaurants was banned nationwide in 1984.
Q 24Uni, the part of the sea urchin eaten as sushi, is actually which organ?
The gonads
Uni is the urchin's gonads: menus euphemise it as 'roe', but both male and female urchins are eaten, each carrying five of the orange lobes arranged in a star inside the shell.
Q 25Hamachi, often sold as 'yellowtail tuna', actually belongs to which family?
The jacks (Carangidae)
Around 120,000 tonnes a year are farmed from wild fry scooped up under floating seaweed each May.
Q 26Farmed Japanese amberjack is called hamachi at about 3 kg and what once it reaches 5 kg?
Buri
Buri is the name for the fully grown fish; its winter fattiness as 'kan-buri' makes it a seasonal delicacy of Himi in Toyama and the Hokuriku coast.
Q 27Ōgiya, a tamagoyaki shop trading in Ōji since 1648, appears in an ukiyo-e print series by which artist?
Hiroshige
Utagawa Hiroshige included Ōgiya in his 'Famous Restaurants of Edo' print series; the shop also turns up in the rakugo tale 'Ōji no kitsune', whose trickster fox is treated to a meal there.
Q 28Traditionally made gari turns naturally pink only under what condition?
The ginger is very young
Only very young ginger, with its pink tips, turns naturally pink in vinegar; mature ginger stays yellowish, so many commercial brands add beet juice, red shiso or the dye E124 for the colour diners expect.
Q 29The Japanese word 'ikura' for salmon roe is borrowed from which language?
Russian
Ikura comes from the Russian 'ikra', which means any fish roe or caviar; Japanese narrowed it to salmon eggs, usually cured in soy sauce and sake.
Q 30Masago, the cheaper roe often swapped in for tobiko, comes from which fish?
Capelin
Masago is the roe of the capelin, a small smelt; tobiko is flying-fish roe and sits between masago and salmon ikura in size, at 0.5 to 0.8 mm per egg.