By MIKI TANIKAWA

TOKYO - As more sushi restaurants open in Europe and Latin America, Japanese sushi academies are training legions of students for the competitive market for sushi chefs abroad . The Tokyo Sushi Academy enrolls about 100 students each year in either intensive, two-month programs or yearlong diploma courses. More than 700 students have graduated from the academy since it opened in 2002, its executives say.

Students at the privately owned academy plan to join the growing ranks of professional Japanese chefs eager to serve a growing overseas appetite for sushi. Their plan to seek jobs abroad comes as revenue is declining within the Japanese sushi sector amid a cutthroat price war within the restaurant industry . Of the 10 people in Kensuke Aoki’s yearlong program, nine said they were preparing for careers abroad. Mr. Aoki sees his training as a way to return to the United States, where he spent two years in college in Nevada.

“I liked the lifestyle there,” he said. “The working environment seems better, and the nature and the wildlife is terrific.” The $17.4 billion sushi restaurant industry in Japan is changing, says Akihiro Nisugi, a restaurant consultant at Funai Consulting, based in Tokyo. “The fastfood ‘rotating conveyor belt’ sushi chains are growing,” he said, “but the traditional sushi restaurant is facing contraction.” Decades ago, an aspiring chef would have joined a traditional sushi restaurant as an apprentice, dreaming one day of becoming a taisho, or a sushi restaurant owner.

But with that sort of job security crumbling, along with the concept of long-term loyalty to one employer, chefs are directing their attention abroad. Taira Matsuki, 39, who completed a short-term program at the Tokyo Sushi Academy two years ago, set up a catering business in Warsaw last year after working at a sushi restaurant in Poland.

“Here, sushi and pizza are two categories that are growing strongly and where people are making money,” said Mr. Matsuki, who now employs five Polish workers. His mainstay product is a $7 sushi lunchbox aimed at business executives. The speed with which he was able to open his own business contrasts with the centuries-old traditions of the Japanese sushi apprenticeship.

“People say it takes three years before you can master the nigiri, and five years before you perfect maki sushi, the roll, and you need 10 years before you become a full-fledged sushi master,” said Ken Kawasumi, chief instructor at the Sushi Academy and a former sushi chef. “That’s not a valid approach anymore.” Koji Ohno, 30, another student at the academy, has worked as an information technology engineer and wants to reinvent himself .

Going the traditional apprentice route is not part of his plan. “That’s a risk I am not willing to take at this age,” he said. He plans to move to Munich, where he once studied German. But traditionalists say the regime of years of training is integral to achieving the right mental attitude as a professional who works directly, almost intimately, with consumers.

“In sushi,” said Issei Kurimoto, a head chef at a sushi restaurant in the Yurakucho area of Tokyo, “you work in an open kitchen counter, facing your customers and serving them directly. You need to develop direct hospitality skills.” Mr. Kurimoto says students at sushi chef schools need more than a diploma.

The true skills of a sushi chef are learned at a tension-filled counter, repeating the routines over and over “until your body knows it,” he said. Even with the training, the skills needed overseas can vary from those required in Japan.

Some Japanese favorites, like conger eel, are not available in most overseas markets, while many consumers in Europe turn up their noses at raw shellfish or salmon roe, which are standard fare in Japan.

In fact, Mr. Matsuki, in Warsaw, says, “Many Polish people aren’t used to raw fish yet”; half the contents of the lunchbox
he reserves are fried.