Ginza Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Ocean Township

We visited for the first time and had a pretty good experience until toward the end. The food was good. I liked that they offer black rice instead of white rice in the maki rolls. The duck appetizer was flavorful and the chef special roll was really good, especially with the real crab meat. The hibachi meal was a lot of food and overall looked good; the shrimp was overcooked but we didn't complain about it. Toward the end of the meal, I noticed 3 of the female staff pointing directly at our table. When they saw me notice them, one of them came over and asked if we were ok with them removing finished dishes from the table. I thought that was a little odd but let it slide. When we went up to pay (since no one came back to retrieve the payment) is when things went all the way left. One of the servers, a young lady who looked to be in high school or early in college, asked how the service was. We responded that it was good. She responded with "REALLY?!!, are you sure!" with such surprise. I asked why she responded like that and she gave me a weird look with a smirk on her face. A lady who I presumed to be one of the owners was up there when this happened, on the phone. She never said a word. I told the young lady that her reply made me nervous and I asked her again and she replied sarcastically with "you should come back more often." That did it for me. I won't be back. That was a strange experience. It's too bad because the food was really good. I don't play when it comes to my food and all I can imagine is they either did something to our food or they were surprised that one of the many servers with whom we interacted did a good job. Either way, I won't chance. ...

Very disappointing experience today. Upon ordering the waitress was visibly annoyed that each person was not ordering a meal (the youngest children did not order their own meal bc they take 5 bites and say they're done) and she verbalized it to the entire party. She then removed the plates that were in front of the 11-month old, 1 yo, 2 yo, and 4yo that were in our party and told us the chef would be upset that each person is ordering a meal. The food was good and the chef was pleasant and interacted well with the kids (reason for the 2-stars). At the end of the meal, after the men in our party had left, the waitress confronted one of the women in our party and said she was bothered by the fact that she overheard us talking about another Hibachi restaurant in the area and how much more pleasant our experience was there with the FRIENDLINESS of the staff - especially towards the kids, who typically love the experience. We decided not to tell the waitress that we were celebrating two of the little ones' birthdays bc of the disappointing experience. We know people can have bad days outside of work so we want to show grace, but it really left a bad taste in our mouth even though the food left a good taste in our mouth. We will be taking our kids to the other Hibachi restaurant for their birthdays...

Great service (Ricky in particular is awesome) and sushi. Miss this place, but grew up going here for most special occasions and getting all-you-can-eat sushi.

I went to Japan and traveled around the countryside for a couple of weeks, and learned that unless you're getting your sushi made from a fish caught 5 minutes ago... it's not worth being snobby about. If the fish is kept fresh and bought from good suppliers, and the chefs are creative, then you're going to get good sushi. Ginza was about as good as most places I went in Japan along the coastline while traveling, so that's as good as a recommendation as you could possibly give a place. Some of the freshest sushi to this day, and I miss it now that I live 6 hours out.

There's also a liquor store nearby, and Ginza is BYOB, so I'd suggest having their sushi with Asahi or Sapporo. And no, it's not shameful to drink cheap Asahi with sushi, literally every meal I had in Japan (including at a 4-star $200/head restaurant) only served Asahi or Sapporo, maybe Orion or Kirin at...