Miyazaki Beachside Sushi-Making Class with Michelin Chef

The road to sushi mastery is a long and difficult one.

Few would know this better than Chef Ueda “Kaz” Kazu, previously head chef of the Michelin-starred Sushi Zo in Los Angeles, and now lead instructor at the sushi-making school Osu no Sushi in the seaside town of Aoshima, Miyazaki Prefecture. But while receiving a certification from Osu no Sushi takes two months of non-stop training, Chef Ueda also offers a much shorter two-hour introductory course, intended to get guests acquainted with the basics of the time-honored culinary art form.

In this course, you’ll start with an introduction to the history and culture of sushi, followed by a practical lesson on how to shape shari, the building block of all nigiri sushi. Once you’ve got acquainted with that, you’ll move on to the proper methods of cutting fish and putting shari and neta (topping) together. Don’t worry about getting stuck: Chef Ueda will be there every step of the way to give each participant personalized attention.

At the end of the course, you’ll be able to feast on not just the nigiri you’ve created, but also that made by the Michelin master himself. Accompanied by a free flow of green tea and a bowl of freshly-made miso soup, you’ll witness locally-caught seafood being effortlessly transformed by Chef Ueda’s deft hands and knife into some of the world’s finest sushi — and then eat it.

As if learning how to make sushi from a Michelin-starred chef wasn’t enough, you’ll be doing it in Aoshima, the jewel of Miyazaki Prefecture. As the country’s surfing capital, Miyazaki’s beaches are second to none — and Aoshima holds claim to some of the best in the prefecture.

With its crystal-clear waters and sunkissed shores, Aoshima is the very picture of an idyllic Japanese seaside town. It’s also the starting point of one of Miyazaki’s most famous attractions, the Nichinan Coast: more than 50km of Japan’s most unspoilt coastline that’s also home to one of the country’s most sacred sites, Udo Shrine.