Shogun Sushi Bar, The Mailbox

For some people, the idea of sushi is right up there with spiders and walking on the cracks in the pavement on a list of irrational fears.

It's true that Japanese-style raw fish served on blocks of slightly vinegary rice is a bit of an acquired taste, but once you've acquired it, oh boy...

I ate my first slices of raw fish just hours after arriving in Tokyo at the start of what turned out to be a five-year stint of living in Japan, but I have to admit that it took me a fair few months to start actually craving the stuff.

Now it is a total mystery to me why anyone bold enough to order a chicken korma in an Indian restaurant would baulk at some tasty tuna and rice.

It's not slimy, it's GOT to be fresh, it tastes great, it goes brilliantly with lager, and it's good for you.

The only thing that's bad about it is that it can cost you an arm and a leg if you buy it at an upmarket restaurant.

Which is where Shogun in Birmingham's Mailbox centre comes in with its £10 all-you-can-eat deal.

The place has one of the city's two super-cool kaiten-zushi conveyor belts that let you select small plates of things that catch your fancy as they wind their way around the bar.

In Japan, staff work out how much to charge you after your meal by totting up the number of plates you got through, each colour-co-ordinated for a particular price.

At Shogun, which is soon to relocate to a different unit at the Mailbox, all you have to do is make sure to keep within their two-hour limit.

On our most recent visit, pal Jane stuck cautiously to salmon, with a couple of roll-sushi selections thrown in for good measure, and a salad to boot.

I'm more of a tuna fan - and I made sure that my two hours of indulgence contained plenty of the deep red "maguro" sushi.

For a particularly authentic experience, you can fill a little bowl with soy sauce and mix in a small amount of green wasabi paste to dip your sushi into before you bite.

To go native, as it were, you'll need to collect a stash of delicately pickled ginger to munch on between courses, to cleanse the palate anew for the next round.

It had been a good couple of years since my last visit to Shogun, and the quality and range of sushi seemed to have improved - I certainly don't remember the all-you-can-eat range containing delicious yellowtail and squid.

Maybe the fact that London chain Yo! Sushi have opened a rival kaiten-zushi bar at Selfridges in the BullRing has upped the city's sushi stakes a bit.

Make no mistake, Shogun's sushi is not going to impress the bosses of Toyota, but you're eating food that's pretty much what an average Tokyo office worker would accept for lunch. And that's streets ahead of the stuff supermarkets pass off as sushi in this country.

I only have two gripes about the kaiten-zushi experience at Shogun. One is that the salads on the carousel aren't really Japanese. Secondly, Shogun adds a 10 per cent service charge on to your bill, which is a bit rich when you've essentially been serving yourself.

Still, after a couple of drinks in a couple of hours at Shogun, we left very well fed and extremely happy with a bill of £31. And that's about what it cost per person on my last visit to Yo! Sushi - although it was admittedly for better food that was prepared to order.

You don't have to eat raw fish at Shogun - it has lots of teppanyakki hotplate tables where staff cook everything from garlic scallops to fine steak and tasty fried rice. You can also order staples like yakitori barbecue chicken skewers, and deep fried tofu.

For a tenner a head, anyone who ever fancied trying proper sushi has no excuse not to give it a whirl.

By Jim Dunton