Rewind 23 years and I was a bite-sized 6-year old on my first overseas adventure in the heart of bright-lights-big-city Tokyo with my standard regulation Cathay Pacific yellow backpack. Food was a love, even back then although in 1986 I was honestly more amazed that Ronald McDonald had an identical Japanese cousin who said konichi-wa instead of Hello!

One of my most vivid memories however on that trip concerns the equation of sushi and technology. One night, Dad decided to take my entire family to eat at a small sushi studio somewhere in Tokyo. Interest was waning at the thought of rice and seaweed but it quickly peaked when I noticed that in front of each person was an Atari-looking pad of buttons with lots of colourful and creative photos of the mere sushi. I don’t remember if it was me or one of my sister’s who started the button pushing but before we could blink an eye our “button choice” of sushi was being brought out by a waiter and placed in front of us and from then on a button frenzy began. To this day, Dad still says it was the most expensive meal our family has ever eaten and looking back now I can only imagine what the bill would have totalled to in Yen for 7 hungry mouths more focused on the novelty of button-pushing than focusing on what we were eating.

Flash-forward 23 years and I found myself in Tokyoria at World Square, Sydney in front of a flat screen, with four of my girlfriends pre SATC 2. We were hoping for a quick Japanese meal before heading across to the cinema and we were definitely not disappointed. After working out how to order, food quickly appeared just as it had many years ago in Tokyo. At the touch of a button, miso soup and agedashi tofu was before us and feeling a bit hungrier than we thought extra food was tapped, ordered and almost magically appeared before our eyes.

Tokyoria’s food was a tad on the pricier side but for $30 each between the 5 of us (after several dishes to share including dessert and drinks), the dinner definitely hit the spot. It might be 23 years later that Sydney finally caught up but it was well worth the wait and in hindsight what a privilleged little 6 year old I was, to get to peer into the future!

Tokyoria @ Upper level 644 George Street Sydney 2000