While Japanese food has benefited from a consistently developing boom around the world, there are still some voices from staunch traditionalists in the culinary world that keep sushi restaurants a male-dominated industry. You may remember Kazuyoshi Ono, son of Jiro Ono, the renowned chef of three-Michelin star restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro featured in the 2011 documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” once remarked that the menstrual cycles of women negatively affect their sense of taste. Along with similar beliefs that a woman's makeup blocks her sense of smell and that women's hands are too warm for preparing sushi, there are still many that believe sushi is a man's job.

Nadeshico Sushi in Tokyo's Akihabara district, has been working to dispel such claims as Japan's first all-female staffed sushi restaurant. Recently, Great Big Story made a feature on Nadeshico Sushi in conjuncture with ANA, interviewing sushi chef Yuki Chizui about her work and the challenges faced as a female sushi chef in Japan.

Although trained by men, Chizui and her colleagues were previously only valued for their feminine aesthetic

There are some understandable reservations that the restaurant takes up residence in Akihabara, Tokyo's tech and geek mecca that is home to dozens of Maid Cafes, where customers can be catered to like gods by women dressed up in maid outfits, and thus may just be providing a different service in the same line of work. Chizui is adamant that the restaurant's work is sincere challenging the limits of tradition by providing quality sushi as women, however, and perhaps Akihabara may be just the place to change the minds of someone expecting a different type of experience. The restaurant's name is derived from the term "Yamato Nadeshico", a term that essentially means the "personification of an idealized Japanese woman."

Making sushi is also a performance art, so the restaurant hopes to use its all female staff to its advantage

She has a simple response for those who say women can't make sushi

As well as a goal to work toward

You can watch the video below, and if you ever want to visit Nadeshico Sushi, you can find directions here.