Chef Hanaya Yohei invented modern sushi in the early 1820s

Yohei's sushi innovation turned sushi into a convenient fast food

Nigiri took relatively little time to prepare, making it an ideal dish to serve from a food stand. The success of Yohei’s stand, where customers could select their desired toppings, inspired others to open similar businesses.

Conveyor belt sushi was invented in 1958

Yoshiakai Shiraishi had trouble staffing his sushi restaurant with waiters. When he saw a conveyor belt moving beer bottles at a brewery, he realized the technology could solve his problem. He unveiled his innovation at his Osaka restaurant in 1958, introducing a style, kaitenzushi, that would be replicated by others—and contribute to sushi’s growing popularity.

The rice in sushi wasn't originally intended to be eaten

In Southeast Asia in the third century, rice, mixed with salt, was used to preserve fish for several months. The rice was considered too salty to eat and was often thrown away, though adventurous eaters, over time, began eating the rice. In 16th-century Japan, rice was often mixed with vinegar rather than salt, a practice that eventually led to the modern version of sushi. “Sushi” roughly translates to “vinegared rice.”

Watch a Japanese chef demonstrate how he prepares sushi

Tokyo's Naomichi Yasuda shows how he cuts tuna, wraps a maki roll, and assembles nigiri. In the process, he explains the proper way to enjoy the creations, offering advice for getting the most flavor.

A television show helped popularize sushi in the US in the 1980s

"Shogun," a miniseries released in 1980, followed a British sailor's journey through 17th-century Japan. Nearly a third of American households watched its five installments, and it was used as an instructional text in classrooms throughout the '80s, inspiring a wave of American interest in Japanese culture, including sushi.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

A Netflix documentary ignited an omakase sushi craze

Before 2012, edomae omakase was an expensive sushi experience that was not particularly popular in the US. That changed with “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” a 2011 film about the 85-year-old owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, an omakase restaurant with three Michelin stars, that earned rave reviews. Demand for omakase exploded, and restaurants responded by raising their prices.

Norway is responsible for salmon sushi

Japanese sushi did not include salmon until the mid-1990s because Pacific salmon was known to contain parasites. Norway, meanwhile, had an abundance of Atlantic salmon, which was safe to eat raw. The country smelled an opportunity and launched Project Japan, which successfully convinced the country that Atlantic salmon was safe to include in its cuisine.

The sushi burrito hails from San Francisco

Inventor Peter Yen wanted to combine sushi-making techniques with Latin flavors, so he founded Sushirrito, which specializes in burrito-sized sushi rolls with Mexican-inspired fillings like ginger guacamole.

Sushi contains cooked or raw fish, and comes in various rolls and styles

In the US, most sushi restaurants serve maki and uramaki, which feature fish wrapped in rice. But those are far from the only styles of sushi out there.

Sushi apprenticeships often last for at least 10 years

Sushi is often treated as a precise art form, with master chefs taking on apprentices who must slowly earn the responsibility of preparing the food. In the video below, Oona Tempest, an apprentice at Tanoshi Sushi NYC, explains what the years-long process entails.

Bluefin tuna, now used in high-end sushi, was once reserved for cat food

Until the ‘70s, the enormous fish were the base for cat food or, at times, thrown into the trash. Now it’s the most expensive fish in the ocean and is a popular topping for nigiri sushi thanks to the abundance of fat in its belly.

Funazushi takes 3 years to prepare

Funazushi is a type of honnare (sometimes spelled hon-nare or called narezushi) sushi. Unlike nigirizushi, the quicker form that's commonly found in restaurants, honnare is preserved over a long stretch of time. Mariko Kitamura, who runs a funazushi shop in Takashima City, Japan, describes the dish as a "fish version of prosciutto" with a saltiness that's similar to caviar.

Gas station sushi is actually pretty safe to eat, experts say

Vending machine food, in general, gets a bad rap for its seeming lack of freshness, but whether the food you eat is safe usually depends on the quality of the cold chain supply logistics that brought it to the point of sale. Most prepackaged sushi fish has been flash frozen, and the rice has been mixed with vinegar to inhibit bacteria.

Hibachi restaurants were designed to appeal to American soldiers stationed in Japan

Hibachi-style cooking was originally used in residences, with Japanese families cooking together around the grill. That style was then refined after World War II with the teppanyaki restaurant Misono, which used more American-friendly ingredients (like steak) to appeal to American soldiers stationed in the country. Despite the differences between teppanyaki and hibachi, diners began using "hibachi" to describe the concept. Later, the Aoki family brought it to American soil with Benihana.

How science came to understand umami

Before Dr. Kikunae Ikeda sat down in 1907 and pondered the taste of dashi, scientists typically agreed upon four types of taste: sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. He boiled 90 pounds of kelp into a resin that he then stripped of different compounds until he was left with a single ounce of brown crystals. Testing later revealed these crystals were glutamate, an amino acid and one of the protein's building blocks.

Some call Beard the original 'foodie'

James Beard came of age when home cooking revolved around canned and frozen ingredients. Likewise, West Coast cuisine wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Beard’s appreciation of fresh, seasonal ingredients and regional influences provided a foundation for today’s movement toward local, farm-to-table cooking and the foodies who seek it out.

Historians believe the first modern restaurant was opened in 1765

A Parisian soup salesman named Boulanger is often credited with opening the first modern restaurant and was renowned for serving meat in poulette sauce.

The history of sufganiyot, or Hanukkah doughnuts

Mediterranean-focused food blogger Tori Avey shares her best recipe for fluffy, sugar-dusted sufganiyot and explains the history of the sweet that combines European and North African traditions.

The Japanese folklore that inspired Pokémon

Characters from the popular video game series appear to reference the yōkai from Japanese folklore, which first became popular during the country's Edo period, when art and literature became mass-produced.

The tiny Japanese village responsible for the world's best turntable needles

Hamasaka is an unassuming village four hours from Kyoto, but it's an important location for audiophiles thanks to its JICO factory, which manufactures turntable needles that replicate vintage and discontinued models.

Japan's wrestling style is called puroresu

Puroresu has a long history in Japan, much of it traced back to Mitsuhiro Momota, better known as Rikidozan, who was the form’s first superstar and a hero to the country in the wake of World War II.

Shohei Ohtani's interpreter allegedly stole $16M for gambling debts

Ippei Mizuhara first met Shohei Ohtani during the two-way star’s rookie year in Japan. Ten years later, Mizuhara, who had become a trusted friend and confidant to Ohtani, is alleged to have stolen $16M from his employer to repay gambling debts.

Basketball was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith

When Dr. James Naismith hung two peach baskets at either end of a Springfield College gymnasium, he was just looking to keep the school’s athletes occupied and safe during harsh New England winters, but the game he created would quickly turn out to be a national sensation.

Bob Noyce coinvented the integrated circuit, cofounded Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor, and is considered one of the founders of Silicon Valley

Some even called Noyce the “Mayor of Silicon Valley.” According to Steve Jobs, he was the “ultimate inventor, rebel, and entrepreneur.” This Founders episode dissects an article from 1983 that explains Noyce’s lasting impact.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Yoga dates back to about 1500 BCE

The earliest known mention of the word is in the Rig Veda, one of the four canonical Hindu texts. Rishis, or sages, then documented its evolution in the Upanishads, the Hindu scriptures. Much of the modern understanding of Yoga comes from “Yoga Sutras of Patañjali,” which outlines the practice’s eight elements, including physical postures and breathwork.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Poison ivy is in the same family as mangoes, cashews, and pistachios—and they all produce oily urushiol in their raw, unprocessed state—but they are typically prepared in ways to avoid causing human discomfort.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.