
Why is the education of a sushi chef so insanely long? - Red_Tarsius
http://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-education-of-a-sushi-chef-so-insanely-long?share=1
======
redcups
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](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.

~~~
MrJagil
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](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092048/?ref_=fn_al_tt_9)

~~~
astrange
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](http://www.andyhayler.com/restaurant/sushi-sawada)

------
gwern
Well, you could accept at face-value the self-congratulating laudatory first
answer... or you could look at how apprenticeships traditionally work, the low
wages, concepts like hidden equity, and the sale of restaurants to successors.

~~~
ableal
"And Jacob served seven years for Rachel", a very old and instructive tale ...

------
DanielBMarkham
Maybe I'm mistaken, but when I read stories of succesfull startups (aside from
the usual startup porn), I keep hearing stories of people _who didn 't know_.
Sure, they had ideas, intuition, a deep intuition about where the market was
-- but they didn't really know.

So they tried experiments and learned. Then they did that some more. The
constant refrain is intellectual humility and seeking to understand the people
they are trying to help at a deep subconscious level.

Contrast this to the way I and many others think about various skills. We take
a few classes, we play around and are able to achieve some simple level of
competence. Somebody then gives us a certificate or other form of public "gold
star". Then we feel like we know something.

Socrates was right: true wisdom comes from understanding how little you know
and using all of your energy instead to concentrate on asking better
questions.

~~~
stephengillie
When you don't know, the fastest way to learn is to find someone who _does_
know, and ask them.

If one sushi chef likes another chef's sushi, why doesn't the one just ask the
other how to make it? Because of social reasons?

~~~
rifung
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 to guess with
hopefully high accuracy what they were going to do so that you could take
advantage of it and it's fine because even if you are wrong sometimes you just
still end up positive. Of course, the problem is you can't actually really
assign probabilities to your guesses and you might have less than a second to
decide what to do.

I imagine this is the same with making sushi. You might understand that if a
fish is a certain way, you need to add more rice, or vice versa, but you can't
just "measure" the fish and instead go off your intuition.

Honestly I don't know a thing about making sushi but the post described having
to go off intuition, and it's just not something that can really be taught
easily.

~~~
stephengillie
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 over 4.5 years to hit the
mythical 10,000 hours. And so 5 years is usually a reasonable benchmark for
mastery of any profession of tasks.

Probably at least some of this is marketing - an 8-year sushi chef is probably
only marginally better than a 3rd year sushi chef, and most non-connoisseurs
would have trouble telling the differences between their creations.

~~~
rifung
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.

------
tgb
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.

~~~
mahranch
> _Can a blinded panel pick out top quality sushi?_

Since fish can vary from practically tasteless to overpowering, it probably
depends on the type of fish. But I've seen people can eat sushi and tell you
the exact temperature based on the flavor. Or what part of the ocean the fish
came from based on the flavor. Those are pretty objective metrics.

Then there's also the whole "people end up in the hospital if you screw up".
If you're a poor and unclean sushi chef, you _are_ going to make people sick
eventually.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That sound impressive, unless they didn't actually prove their claim. Did
someone have a thermometer to stick in the fish? Did someone have evidence the
fish came from that part of the ocean? They are objective ONLY if they were
actually measured.

------
bkeroack
It's only "insane" by myopic Western/American standards. Look at the martial
arts of Japan (Judo, Jujitsu) where to earn a black belt--which is
traditionally not the end of learning but merely symbolizes understanding of
the basics--takes at least 10 years of dedicated study. Since martial arts
began to be "Americanized" in the ~1980s, we now see black belts handed out to
8 year old children after a year or two of study (in fairness, Tae Kwon Do is
the more common offender in that regard).

~~~
sp332
It's insane because it covers a very narrow range of topics. We make people
doctors after 8 years of study, only a few of which involve actual practice.

~~~
ejstronge
I'm not sure if you're referring to medical education in the United States.

If you are, individuals who ultimately care for patients must complete college
(4 years), medical school (>4 years), and a residency program (3+ years).

Thus, training to be a physician in the US would require at least 11 years, of
which at least five (the last five) would involve extensive patient contact.

~~~
nqzero
technically, an undergrad degree isn't required, only a handful of courses

whether you'd actually get admitted without one is an exercise for the reader

~~~
ejstronge
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.

~~~
blue11
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.

~~~
ejstronge
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.

------
Red_Tarsius
_Kaz Matsune_ 's insights on the training of suchi chefs are very insightful:
[http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-train-to-be-a-
master...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-train-to-be-a-master-sushi-
chef/answer/Kaz-Matsune-1)

I was also surprised to find out how difficult it was to make good sashimi:
_Does a sashimi chef really need that much skill?_
[http://www.quora.com/Sushi/Does-a-sashimi-chef-really-
need-t...](http://www.quora.com/Sushi/Does-a-sashimi-chef-really-need-that-
much-skill)

------
imjk
He explains things well generally, and then lists off a bunch of different
examples, but I don't think we gets specific enough.

For example, he says, "I think my nigiri is still far from perfect: could use
improvement to reach the perfect fish and rice balance with firmness and
texture."

Why does this take years as opposed to taking standardized pieces of fish and
testing by simply adding more or less rice to it. Why would this process take
years?

I get what he's saying in general, that things can be infinitely improved, but
why years and decades?

~~~
jbhatab
I completely agree. It's just a process. The people trying to say that it
takes years are just glorifying old standards

~~~
Red_Tarsius
Today people are still buying _hand-made_ portrait paintings. They could
easily spend x10 less and take a photo or hire a digital painter. However,
they still choose the old, irrational way.

The process itself is the value. The years spent mastering the little things
is the sacrifice that makes it valuable to the costumer. In return, the chef
follows the path to _satori_ by sticking to his chosen _kata_ , the way.
Japanese work ethic is deeply rooted in the zen tradition.

~~~
jbhatab
I get what you are saying, and I'm just thinking about it from the perspective
of a blind taste test because that's honestly all I care about. Others may
love the experience of a person making it beautifully but I'm fine with a
robot banging out high quality sushi for me.

------
bane
Languages all seem to lack the right word for it. "Mastery", "wisdom" etc. all
don't seem to quite capture the essence of it.

I'm frequently glad for Heinlein's invention of the word "grok" to finally
give a name to it. I just wish it was a prettier word.

~~~
ableal
There's
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_\(feeling\))
, although it's not a verb, and would probably be rather weirded if verbed.

(That page ends up referencing, among other things,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori) ,
which may go well with sushi.)

~~~
bane
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.

~~~
diminoten2
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".

~~~
mercer
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...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most-
productive-shortcut-with-vim/1220118#1220118)

------
Puts
Programming should be like this. When you're in your twenties thinking you
know everything you should have have an old master slapping you on the writs
telling you that even if you think you are - you actually are not ready
building real systems yet. ;-)

~~~
Red_Tarsius
Older programmers may not know the latest hip language and frameworks, but are
closer to the _essence_ of their craft. Past experiences open the mind to
patterns and _ways of doing_ the 20yo code monkey can't quite conceive yet.

~~~
jbhatab
And 20 year olds have a perspective of the world that older generations can't
appreciate. Who's to say which has more value?

We shouldn't glorify youth or age, just quality.

~~~
loco5niner
That may simply be because they know better ;-)

------
zyxley
I wonder how much training sushi chefs had when it was first invented during
the Edo period. Sushi then was a cheap fast food you ate with your hands, and
for a long time only a part-time side business for chefs who worked with other
foods.

------
jl6
I'll stop short of a comparison between sushi mastery and programming but I
recognise the feeling when the more advanced your skills, the further you
recognise you are from (unattainable) perfection.

------
joshuaheard
Part of the Japanese culture is the achievement of perfection. One will never
achieve perfection in art, such as making sushi, hence the paradox.

------
kaeluka
People should see the "Bite of China" series:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRHNa9qdtlw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRHNa9qdtlw)

It contains plenty of examples of amazing craftsmanship.

------
gjkood
To be able to eat Fugu and still live to tell about it?

