The latest scandal to rock Japan centers on an act of "sushi terrorism", so named because it involves video of a teen licking a communal soy sauce bottle, the rim of a tea cup, and a passing order of nigiri at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. 1/
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The restaurant where the incident took place is part of the Sushiro chain. Its parent company saw its stock drop 5% (roughly 5.7 billion dollars worth) on the heels of the breaking news. The prank video has been viewed over 40 million times. 2/
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This is reminiscent of a 2019 incident that saw a teen film herself licking the top of a Blue Bell Ice Cream container before depositing it back in the store's freezer. She was caught, fined, and sentenced to some modest jail time. 3/
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That incident was, in turn, reminiscent of the time Ariana Grande was caught on security camera licking the doughnuts on display at a California doughnut shop back in 2015. 4/
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She subsequently apologized, blaming her actions on...checks notes...her frustration at American eating habits and childhood obesity rates. Don't recall how much jail time she got. 5/
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Back in Japan, some are saying this recent act of food tampering could mean the end of the line for conveyor belt sushi. Alternately, safety measures may be enacted that will undoubtedly befuddle future generations and tourists for years to come. 6/
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In much the same way visitors to the Tokyo are left to wonder why the hell there are no public garbage bins (a response to the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway) or why absolutely everything is obsessively individually wrapped. 7/
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The latter was a safety measure put in place following several food tampering scares, like the Glico-Morianaga case in which a mysterious entity calling itself "The Monster with 21 Faces" threatened to lace candies with potassium cyanide.. 8/
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...and poison products from various food companies unless a ransom was paid. The culprit(s) were never caught but, some 35+ years later, the case's impact still resonates in the form of individually wrapped convenience store bananas. 9/
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The Japanese take their food security very seriously. Back in 2014, after a customer claimed to have found cockroach pieces in his instant noodle package, Maruka Foods took the unusual step of installing video cameras in their factories. 10/
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Thus, in the future, if any customer were to make similar claims, the company would be able to identify the lot number and "review the tape", either pinpointing the issue or exonerating themselves. 11/
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These may seem like extreme precautions, but not so when you consider that food poisoning "has been the main food safety concern of surveyed Japanese people for almost every year since 2008, according to a study."
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