Across the street of my apartment in lower Manhattan there was a sushi bar named Japonica which I frequented during my stay in NYC, which reminded me of the Latin name of a disease "encephalitis Japonica."
Most of the customers were Americans because it was in lower Manhattan, not in midtown where there were a lot of Japanese offices. The chef of Japonica was a real Japanese from Osaka, though. Therefore, whenever I ate at Japonica, I sat at the sushi bar counter and enjoyed talking with him in our Japanese Osaka dialect. According to the chef, movie stars living in Manhattan often came there to eat sushi. I never saw one, but I heard from the chef, " Hey Dr. Kido, if you came here yesterday, you could have
seen Meryl Streep." Well, I didn’t trust his information fully, to tell the truth.

There also as a supermarket called Daido in Queens. Daido was popular in the Japanese community, because it had a large varieties of Japanese foods.
I also often went shopping there. Right next to Daido there was a sushi bar whose name I don’t remember but I used to eat there after shopping at Daido.
The chef at the sushi bar was a young Japanese guy just starting living in NYC.
He asked me about living in NYC, including medical matters. Since I advised him properly each time, he treated me as a special customer. I once took a Colombian female resident there. The chef treated us as special customers and the friendly communication between us also pleased her.
Regrettably Daido and the sushi restaurant nearby burnt down because of a fire set by a business competitor.

The best known sushi bar in NYC then was Seto Sushi. Seto Sushi obtained a 3 stars rating from Mimi Sheraton's Restaurant Guide of The New York Times, which was a well known restaurant guide among New Yorkers. It was the first Japanese 3 star restaurant. Only fresh and best quality fish were served at Seto.
I admit it had the same quality as the best sushi restaurants in Tokyo and Osaka.
The prices was not cheap at all, but were reasonable compared with those of the same quality in Tokyo and Osaka.

One day I took a guest from Japan to Seto. He ate the sushi and was very satisfied.
A cockroach, a real NYC specialty, unexpectedly ran across the wall behind the sushi counter. I pretended not to see it. But I was pretty sure my guest recognized it.
This was because his pace of ordering sushi suddenly slowed down, and he began drinking hot tea instead.