Et tu, swordfish?

Ever wonder why sushi is so expensive? Or why it comes in little 3 x 4 boxes? Or why there is always plastic grass inside the box instead of fresh parsley?

The answer to the second question can be discovered by either staring at the seaweed wrapper that your dinner came in, or my staring at this website about the wrapper. Notice that on this site, as on every other nori website across the entire world wide web (with possible exception of Wikipedia), there is no description of the sheet dimensions. But each sheet is magically the right size to make exactly eight out of the twelve slices of sushi in your order.

This probably isn't news to you if you work at the sushi bar, and, in fact, you probably enjoy rolling one and a half sheets of nori for each person who orders an M & M Roll. Especially since it takes you twice as long to complete a single sushi order as it would if the nori sheets were one and a half times longer.

Sound a little "fishy?" Could the largest supplier of fresh sushi to supermarkets nationwide have overlooked this simple detail? I'm not proposing an answer to my first question. Maybe someone just likes long lunch lines.