Grim acts of ‘sushi terrorism’ have forced four of Japan’s ‘big five’ restaurants to scrap self-service after footage showed customers rubbing their saliva on plates.
Sushi served on the conveyor belt has long been a favorite among diners, but there are now fears they may be taken out on the road due to the horrific behavior of some customers.
Leading restaurants in Japan that use the kaiten, or rotating, serving system are being forced to switch to more traditional methods of serving their raw delicacies.
Now, only one of the five largest sushi chains in Japan, Kura Sushi, remains committed to keeping its sushi available to customers.
The “sushi terrorism” trend in Japan has customers doing gross things at restaurants, such as licking bottles of soy sauce and eating ginger straight from a communal jar.
A teenager was filmed licking a bottle of soy sauce in Akindo Sushiro, Japan, in an act known as ‘sushi terrorism’
Sushiro then did away with conveyor belts and opted for large touchscreens to display their dishes
Yoshinoya
In April, footage showed a man, locally named Ryu Shimazu, dining in Yoshinoya, Osaka, using a pair of chopsticks to push large amounts of red grated ginger from a shared black container into his mouth.
According to local reports, he was arrested for conspiring to interfere in the affairs of the popular eatery.
Yoshinoya was subsequently forced to stop offering the belt serving position after Shimazu “caused fear and bad feelings among other customers and raised questions about safety and security in the food service industry.”
But the heinous acts of ‘food terrorism’ did not stop there.
A kind of Sushiro
Other footage also shows a teenage diner at Akindo Sushiro, Japan, touching pieces of sushi on a conveyor belt with freshly licked fingers and cups, before leaving them in a pile for other customers to use.
The chain’s owner said the footage led to a sharp drop in shares after it went viral, racking up nearly 40 million views in June.
The Sushiro diner was seen covering his finger in saliva before touching plates of food, an act that left viewers – and the restaurant – in shock
According to The Asahi Shimbun, Sushiro then removed the tires and introduced a large touchscreen to virtually show dishes instead of parading plates of food past guests.
A monitor, called Digital SushiroVision, or Digiro, shows animated images of sushi dishes moving around on the conveyor belt at each table and counter that can be ordered.
“Digital technology has helped us create a new way to enjoy conveyor belt sushi,” said Kohei Nii, president of Akindo Sushiro Co, the chain’s operator.
‘Digiro offers a happier and more enjoyable dining experience.’
The creepy clips have not only caused much embarrassment for the popular eateries, but have also increased costs for the targeted restaurants, who have been forced to apologize to their disgusted customers.
Choshimaru
Worried that the wave of ‘sushi terrorism’ in Japan is growing and images of the sickening acts are regularly appearing on social media, Choshimaru, a chain that operates restaurants in and around Tokyo, revealed last year that it would be taking drastic measures to combat the problem. to fight. after a diner stubbed out a cigarette in a jar of pickled ginger.
The chain’s staff initially began bringing condiments and cutlery to tables each time a new group of guests were seated.
But the eatery went one step further, revealing that conveyor belts at all 63 restaurants would be shut down – and more staff would be brought in to manually deliver orders.
While this took away the popular and fun element of ordering sushi, the company reasoned that the absence of plates traveling on a conveyor belt through the restaurant would make it virtually impossible for pranksters to tamper with other customers’ orders.
And a number of other restaurants followed suit.
Kura Sushi is confident that they want to maintain their conveyor belt system
At Kura Sushi, the plates are equipped with protective screens, while the conveyor belts are equipped with alarms and CCTV cameras
Kura Sushi has installed a series of costly security measures in an effort to combat the abhorrent acts
Hama sushi
Hama Sushi did away with the conveyor belt at the start of the pandemic, when the trend started to become popular in Japan Japan today.
Instead, they now rely solely on the express lanes used by most major chains, where the customer orders via a touchscreen at their seat and the desired dish zooms straight to their table.
Tablets are also being installed in the tables, so customers have less physical contact with the dishes before or after ordering.
Kura Sushi
Yet Kura Sushi takes a stand against the ‘sushi terrorists’ and keeps the conveyor belts alive through the use of technology.
The restaurant had to take special precautions after a customer was caught eating sushi from a moving belt and drinking straight from a communal bottle of soy sauce.
The new measures include installing antibacterial covers to protect the fish from stray saliva droplets and AI camera systems to identify suspicious customer behaviour.
They have also added microchips to the boxes the sushi plates come in.
In addition to monitoring how long they have been on the leash, they can detect if the case has been tampered with, so customers can avoid sushi that may have been compromised.
“Conveyor belt sushi is something we are proud of as part of Japanese culture. “We want to ensure that our customers can safely and comfortably eat belt-delivered sushi,” a company official said last year.
“Our company has heard from a large number of customers that they no longer trust us or want to go to conveyor belt sushi restaurants,” Hiroyuki Okamoto, head of public relations for Kura Sushi, told reporters, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.
“This is a crisis not just for our stores, but for the entire sushi industry as a whole,” Okamoto said, adding that using AI would reassure diners even if it meant effectively putting them under surveillance .
But most restaurants seem to have had enough of the stomach-churning “sushi terrorism” and are starting to cut out conveyor belts entirely.