There is plenty of cooked sushi to try in order to familiarize someone with sushi so they can become accustomed to it before indulging into the raw or exotic sushi.  There’s ebi, which is cooked shrimp; kani, cooked crab; anago and unagi, cooked eels; shako, cooked mantis shrimp; tako, cooked octopus; all of which can be a good introduction to sushi without eating raw seafood.  There are numerous styles of maki that have cooked ingredients for the squeamish. The Spider Roll is a large maki type roll that is made from a whole cooked soft-shelled crab and several other ingredients.  It just happens one of my favorites since it fulfills every American man’s need of breaded, deep-fried food. The maki is so large that just eating one piece of it in one bite is almost impossible, so be prepared for a mess.

Ordering edamame (fresh, boiled & salted soybeans) to snack on during the meal is a good idea, because sometimes it can take a while for sushi to be prepared.  If you’ve never had them, the soybeans in the pod are eaten by putting the end of the pod in your mouth and pinching the beans out.  Many sushi bars will provide a paper bowl to put the discarded pods in. 

Once you have someone comfortable with the idea of being in the room with a shark’s buffet table, you can introduce them to the idea of eating from the raw side of the smorgasbord.  The selections that are easiest to introduce are negi-toro maki, raw tuna and onions, which makes you feel like you are eating beef tartar; or a spicy tuna maki, which is tuna, mayonnaise, and flying fish eggs, with a fantastic southeast Asian based hot sauce called sriracha (it’s actually made in central California and it makes the world’s best buffalo wings). 

You can appear exceptionally skilled by knowing a few little things to pass on to your guest, like adding only a few drops of soy sauce from the pitcher (called a shoyu sashi) to your dish (called a kozara).  Filling your kozara up with soy sauce is considered wasteful by the Japanese and is a sign of an amateur sushi eater.  Adding just a few drops to your dish every time you need it is the sign of a pro.  You can also make yourself look more accomplished by being sure that only the fish part of their sushi touches the soy sauce and not the rice.  If the rice is dipped into the soy sauce, it soaks it up and the rice ball will fall apart before you can raise it to your mouth. 

What I would consider as one of the most important things to do when introducing someone to sushi is that you don’t get all tied up in forcing etiquette and rules upon the newbie.  Nobody wants to get involved with a hobby or pastime that is overly complicated or dogmatic.  Although there are people who believe that sushi should be eaten at a certain time of day in a certain way with special rules, most of those people started eating sushi just as you and I and weren’t born with the knowledge of the sea gods floating within their heads.  And since you aren’t in Japan you aren’t expected to act like you are Japanese.  Even if the entire staff of the restaurant is from Japan and the menus are written in Japanese, YOU are an American, so you don’t have to feel the need to blend in.  (If you’re reading this and you happen to be of Japanese decent, the idea still applies; the restaurant you’re dining in is in America and the staff realizes they’re serving Americans.)