[Blarg]

I've done it. Came out great too, but took a little practice. Luckily the ugly rolls taste the same as the pretty ones.

Dude, doing this with a chick sounds like the ultimate smooth idea and I congratulate you. Think Annie Hall and Woody with the lobsters. Great bonding opportunity over foolishness. Plus there's good food!

You don't really need a kit. You just need the bamboo roller thingy. And get extra nori(seaweed), because it rips really easily, and when you're new to doing sushi, you'll rip it for sure.

A tip: keep a big bowl of water to wash your fingers in to keep the rice goop/stickiness to a minimum. I forget if you're supposed to add vinegar to the water, because it's been 20 years since I made sushi! But anyway it was great and I got tons of compliments from friends the first time out. People are kinda blown away by it, really, since so few people know how to do it. I can guarantee you'll have fun with it, but also pretty much guarantee that unless you're a natural, you'll have some ugly looking rolls, too. Gotta take it slow, keep your hands clean, and try to keep the rolls tight and not tear the nori.

Great idea to try, though.

Get a variety of ingredients to mess with. I love sashimi and all and I'm totally down with Japanese food, raw fish being great and everything, but still two of my favorite sushi's are diakkon(pickled yellow radish) and cucumber. Got a nice crunch and flavor. Do yourself a favor and stay way from the California roll, that stuff is garbage. You don't need every kind of sushi for your start. Two to four kinds is fine. For two people, I think a very fun and ideal menu would be simply the two veggie ones I mentioned, daikkon and cucumber, and two raw fish ones -- tuna and salmon. Nice variety there in the taste and experience.

Anyway, good luck. This sounds like a perfect avenue to a romp in the sack to me. But no matter what you wind up eating, you'll eat well.

Oh, and get some decent wasabe and plenty of soy. You probably know sushi shouldn't be eaten with just a hint of watery wasabe paste in the soy; you need some aromatic BANG in there. Heaven on earth. I know they sell it in paste form, but when I've had wasabe at home, I have used powder.