I last visited Sushi Arai in 2015. At that point, he had just ceased using two types of shari, and was still in a basement space that would later become a second counter helmed by @mei3158. The restaurant was surprisingly austere - wooden tiles on the wall with the day's menu, low ceilings, and no pottery or ikebana. It reminded me more of #鶴八 or #新橋しみづ than one of Ginza's sushi temples, or #すし匠 , where Arai-san spent the bulk of his training years. It was only a few years later, when Arai-san became yet another impossible booking, that a regular told me this was deliberate choice - that he sought not to emulate his master Nakazawa-san, but rather the style of sushi he personally loved. That Arai-san's vision was a sort of hyper-high-end traditional sushiya.
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The ensuing years have only made bookings here more difficult, and I had basically given up on the idea of returning until a friend who is a regular invited me. The "inside joke" of only allowing pictures of maguro gives the impression that Arai-san is a maguro specialist. And that's not entirely wrong - on some nights as many as 7 or 8 different tuna cuts may be served. But it's still definitely a joke...because Arai-san has incredible range. Flavors are powerful (strong shari, big nigiri), classic, and executed basically flawlessly across the full range of edomae techniques, from sujime (kohada) to konbujime (karei) to various cooked items (kuruma ebi, awabi, anago). The ingredient quality across the board is about as high as it gets, yet - just like the sushiya Arai-san emulates - nothing necessarily stands out or steals the show. For me, most items here approach a personal platonic ideal. The impact is almost like ur-sushi - a template for comparison for all others.
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Arai-san's current space is a few floors upstairs and brighter but still fairly basic, with the exception of a beautifully reflective laquer counter. There is one apprentice whose only job the entire meal is to polish continuously after each nigiri is served - the sort of grunt work that is probably even below the level of plating tsumami or preparing the shari. It is so extraordinary you can see your own reflection while eating. Less