You all know sushi, and probably many of you know what a Kaiten-Sushi is. It is a sushi restaurant, where dishes with different kinds of sushi are moving on a chain in front of you. The system is very easy: the one you like, you take it and eat it. There are different prices indicated by different colours/drawings in the dishes. When you finish eating, someone comes by and check your pile of dishes, so you can pay.

In the small town of Ito, I saw the most advanced technology for this: RFID. The idea itself is very logical: you set a RFID tag for each plate…

… and you just need a reader to get the accumulated consumption without counting.

I still have some doubts about the implementation of this in such a place (the number of dishes to count are normally between 7 and 13, and prices around 150 yen each plate) being profitable… But, that is part of this country’s philosophy: prevent errors of any kind and size.