Did Big Cheese or any of the rest ever discover their home base? The pizza place that turns into a cannon or something? The one where they don't put on work clothes and is listed in the phone book? Some day I want to find a Japanese sub for SPC. I hated the English voiceovers. The show's already funny without every sentence being onomatopoeia.

I have no idea. I've never really been a fan of the show, because of, yeah, like you say, the goddawful English dubbing, which I could never really stomach, not even when I was a dumb teenage nerd. In fact, I think I learned more about the show from Punchy Sonichu than I did from the primary sources!

It had a really weird timeslot when I was in high school, like 5 or 5:30AM so I watched it a lot before biking to school because nothing else was on.

The Japanese version actually got official subs from Discotek Media.

still better than dominoes

I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention the inevitable masses of hair in the cheese.

I thought that was implied when I said "dominoes"

Pizza Hut's expensive as hell here, too. It's almost like a luxury restaurant when it comes to prices.

Regular pizzas cost something like 7-8 euros and at the "better places" (usually restaurants that serve regular food) it's somewhere around 12-14 euros.

These fuckers ask 13 euros for a "regular" size pizza -- which would be a small anywhere else if there was such an option. Family size pizza (which I guess would be about as big as a regular in other places) is 25-30 euros.

At the current rate, 1 USD is almost 0.9 EUR, so if you add a couple of bucks you have dollar prices.

Is it... is it a different *kind* of pizza? Like, made in-house, with fresh, quality ingredients? Surely Pizza Hut doesn't sell their typical, made-frozen-then-reheated pizza-flavoured food products for THAT much money... do they?

It's not the cheapest in the states either, but it's cheaper than the indie/"craft" pizza places.

Oh, Roundtable wants for a large one topping pizza.

Pizza Hut is okay. I would eat it if there was nothing else, but I sure as hell wouldn't drop 15 bucks on one.

I can't remember the last time I had Pizza Hut, but I remember a large being something like .99 USD in the early 2000s. Accounting for inflation that's probably about .99 now.

The only chain pizza we patronize anymore is Papa Murphy's (a 'take-n-bake' pizza franchise). Other than that, it's locally-owned pizzerias or we get something else.

Generally speaking, after having higher-quality pizza, just about every chain tastes like they load up the sauce and/or crust with sugar. At least, that's our experience.

I like Sizzle Pie because they have good vegan options, but I just get it by the slice. Sometimes my housemates go in on pizza but I don't want any with meat or cheese so ordering a whole pizza for myself is kind of like living alone and ordering a whole one. Just because you CAN probably finish it in a day or two doesn't mean that you won't be really sick of pizza for a little while.

Oh whoops.. didn't realize that Sizzle Pie was local. They took over an old pizza place and another one popped up right across the river the next month so I assumed it was national or at least regional. But I also thought that there was only one Round Table Pizza in the world. I don't know too much about pizza.

My favorite non-local pizza is Pizzaria Unos.. Chicago pizza that's all over the east coast for some reason. For a chain it's surprisingly good if you like chicago style.

Is pizza more of a novelty overseas, kind of like Sushi is in the states? There's been a large rise in Kaiten (sushi carousel) places popping up here, and even the shittiest ones can still charge 2.00 for a plate containing four pieces of salmon skin roll, or that really crappy yellow kind with the tuna in the middle. Shit be nasty. "Good" sushi from those places will probably still be 4-4.50 a plate. Adds up really quickly, especially if you go to restaurants because you're hungry.

The Domino's a block from my apartment in Japan, which was run out of a tiny former bike shop, had pretty amazing pizza, and the Japanese Domino's website had a bug that allowed you get basically infinite toppings. The one time during pick-up that the cashier got confused and rang me up despite my having paid online, he was all cutely confused by the difference in price. Still got the pizza.

I think it is a bit of a novelty, but this one was near the naval base, so it still got good business, my bug fuckery notwithstanding.

The one time I went to a Pizza Hut in Korea, it was 100 times fancier, and I got a quite good lasagna dish and ginger lemon tea. I don't recall the price.

Yeah, Korean pizza places are pretty... I wouldn't say great, but they're weird and fun enough to warrant their existence. It's good to know that Pizza Hut Japan focuses on quality; anecdotally, I've heard that McDonalds Moscow is actually quite good, presumably because they wanted to act as an "ambassador" for American businesses, and also didn't have anywhere near enough market penetration to warrant going the cheap, easy, rubbery food route.

IZ - do you guys have any sushi buffets over there? I'm not talking like, Pacific Buffet or some other place that offers supermarket-style frozen sushi for fat people to pick over, I mean like an actual dedicated sushi restaurant with an all-you-can-eat format? It's a format that's getting quite popular here on the East Coast, thanks to the success of a place called Sushi Palace. They offer a wide selection of really tasty, really robust sushi, hand-made, at roughly (wait for it!) twenty bucks a person! No shit. I've been to upscale, hundred-dollar-a-meal sushi places, and I can honestly say that the food at Sushi Palace et al is almost as good, qualitywise, despite costing you no more than your average, midscale dining experience.

It still works out to between 2 and 4 dollars a roll, assuming you're not the Sushi Hulk or something, but you never feel like you're getting ripped off.

It's mostly Kaiten that's caught on, but there WAS this awesome place called Todai.. for a long time there was one in Portland, Chicago and I think a few other other places in the US but now it's just in Korea and Singapore. Which sucks because yeah it was REALLY good all-you-can eat sushi, maybe not the best I've ever had (that award goes to Nanakuza in Milwaukee Wisconsin of all places) but definitely worth it. You ate for free if it was your birthday, and I think 18 bucks for just the buffet and water. Beer of course was 6 bucks, but if you wanna drink before or after, there was a dive bar with 1.75 mini pitchers of PBR across the street. Also, it felt incredibly Japanese going in there, right down to a series of Todai mascots that felt like a mix between Studio Ghibli and Pit Pat the Pansexual non-threatening spokesthing from Mr. Show. I miss that place.

There's still a buffet called Super King (yeah, all I can think of is Bender too) that's mostly Chinese, but does have pretty quality Sushi, but it's no Todai.

For a second there, you made me think I misunderstood the commercial and that Japan was promoting a cat-cafe style of Pizza Hut restaurant.

And now I'm wondering if that HASN'T happened yet...

How many of those commercials have you seen, Cena? The only puppy-centric one I can recall that has nothing to do with actual pet needs is a toilet paper commercial.