Conveyor sushi bars (Kaitenzushi) in Japan, the country’s visiting card, were under threat of closure due to a teenage flash mob – bloggers come to restaurants and spoil other people’s meals).
Videos with the tag #sushiterrorism instantly go viral. The most popular video has been viewed 40 million times on Twitter.
In the video, a teenager licks the rim of an open soy sauce bottle for guests and puts it back on the conveyor belt.
In another video, a young man licks his finger and touches two sushi he didn’t order.
Other sushi terrorists are putting wasabi on their sushi slices as they travel along the strip and lick spoons from a communal green tea jar.
response to cylinders
The kaiten-zushi industry in Japan is huge – estimated at 740 billion yen ($5.7 billion), so the flash mob has caused an uproar, notes Guard. In connection with the wave of sushi terror, the police are already conducting their own investigation.
Shares of the most popular network Sushiro fell sharply due to advertisements. The video, shot at the chain’s Gifu branch, “dropped” shares of the restaurant’s parent company by almost 5% in one day.
At the bottom of one of the clips it reads, “I’ll never go to sushi restaurants on a conveyor belt again.”
Sushiro management immediately changed the rules: Visitors must pick up all sauces and dishes at the service point. Kura Sushi plans to place cameras on conveyor belts to monitor guests, reports CNN. In 2019, the company equipped its conveyor belts with cameras that use artificial intelligence to collect data about what type of sushi customers choose and how many plates are designed for each table.
A spokesperson for Kura Sushi said, “This time, we want to use our artificial intelligence cameras to monitor whether customers place sushi on the plates of their choice.”
“We’re confident we can upgrade the systems we already have to deal with the situation,” he said.
Luna Watanabe, a 20-year-old musician from Tokyo, said she was impressed by the video. “Omotenashi (hospitality) is a major selling point in Japan, so I think it’s inexcusable,” he was quoted by the media.
About the pros
Others, on the contrary, have found advantages in the ongoing flash mob that has greatly reduced the number of visitors. “It’s okay – on the contrary, there will be fewer people in the queue now, so I no longer have to go and order food, even on weekends.” speaks photographer Tetsuya Haneda.
Japanese singer Yuya Tegoshi tweeted, “I always wanted to go to Sushiro, but I couldn’t go because it was always crowded.”
Video of apparently sushi terrorists is a continuation Japanese YouTube trend known as “meiwaku-doga” or “bad videos”. Youtubers make videos like this just to draw attention to the problem. For example, some show how they eat free in a supermarket or walk around without a mask during a pandemic. Now these videos are migrated from YouTube to Twitter and TikTok.
At the same time, both the positive and the anti-trend emerged – popular bloggers shoot videos in kaiten-zushi organizations to increase the organization’s falling participation. For example, this managed Made in Japan by Briton Steve Broad, author of the Abroad channel.