Police in Japan have arrested three persons for unsanitary behavior at a sushi restaurant in what is thought to be the first arrests amid a rash of “sushi terrorism” videos going viral.
Aichi Prefecture police said three people – ages 15, 19 and 21 – were arrested in the past few weeks in connection with the incidents, The Japan Times reported.
In a video, reportedly recorded on February 3, a person is seen grabbing a piece of sushi as it passes on the restaurant conveyor belt, sticking it in their mouth and then drinking from the restaurant’s soy sauce bottle.
The three have not yet been charged, The Japan Times reported, but they face potential charges of “forced obstruction of business,” police said. After the incident, employees at the Kura Sushi restaurant in Nagoya had to do emergency cleaning, “making normal business operations difficult,” police told The Japan Times.
‘Sushi terrorism’ on TikTok, Twitter
The arrests come after viral videos of “sushi terrorism” have emerged on TikTok and Twitter, bringing unwanted bitterness to the multibillion-dollar conveyor sushi business, according to Tokyo-based news site SoraNews24.
The incidents have led two restaurant chains to forego kaitzensushi, the serving of sushi on revolving belts. Most recently, the Choshimaru restaurant chain announced it would switch to a full-ordering system after a video was posted of someone putting a cigarette butt inside a container of picked ginger on a table, SoraNews24 reported.
Sushiro, another restaurant chain, last month filed a damage complaint with police after a video of a customer drinking from the soy sauce bottle, licking unused cups and wiping saliva on a passing sushi dish amassed millions of views online, The Kyodo News reported.
Kura Sushi, the chain where the Nagoya soy sauce incident happened, told The New York Times it planned to upgraded its current video monitoring system with artificial intelligence to watch for unruly customers.
The company, which has more than 500 locations, said it notified police about the incidents to send a message that “such actions are a crime” and to “prevent others from engaging in such behavior,” SoraNews24 reported.
Kura Sushi USA, which has 40 locations in the U.S., told USA TODAY in a statement: “We are not aware of any incidents at our locations in the United States. We actually use a patented protective dome called Mr. Fresh, which covers each plate on the conveyor belt and discourages tampering.”
Should conveyor belt delivery of sushi be abandoned, it would be a loss for customers, SoraNews24’s Casey Baseel wrote: “Made-to-order sushi … takes more time than just grabbing something from the lane, and there’s definitely a drop in fun factor too, as the sight of the colorful parade of up-for-grabs plates and the instant gratification of taking one always makes kaiten sushi meals feel extra special.”
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.
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