'Sushi terror' pranks cause outrage in Japan as arrests are made - BBC News

You may have heard of the recent Japanese phenomenon known as

sushi

terror

ism. It refers to a spate of unhygienic

pranks

in restaurants where people film themselves handling food on

sushi

conveyor belts, while Japanese police have just

made

the first

arrests

over the videos that have sparked

outrage

in a country famous for its cleanliness. Now we can learn more about this trend thanks to Shiva Khalil, who is in Tokyo. Hello to you Shima, and this must certainly be one of the strangest stories you've covered, how this trend started. um first of all, Anita, I want to apologize and more so to our viewers, if you're eating, you might want to put down your food before you hear this.

This happened last month when a viral video came out of a man um at a sushi restaurant. the sushi kaitan what is the name of the conveyor belt um showing him licking a bottle of soy sauce in this on the sushi trail and also rubbing saliva on the sushi as it moved on the conveyor belt um this happened in a branch of a famous chain sushi restaurants is called Kura Sushi and since then dozens of videos of similar unsanitary and unsanitary

pranks

have appeared online and of course you can imagine the shock and disgust it

cause

d online among people and among customers.

Remember, of course, this is horrible anywhere in the world, but this. It's Japan, this is a country that is very, very, very particular about hygiene and high standards of cleanliness, people still wear masks indoors and outdoors, even though the rules have been relaxed a bit, you have You have to take off your shoes again. for hygiene reasons um and for this to happen here in a country with a very particular and demanding culinary etiquette, you can imagine how shocking and horrible it was for people today three

arrests

have been

made

, a 20-year-old man and two teenagers and We understand that they all admitted what happened at the Kura sushi restaurant and one of them reportedly apologized, but since then sushi restaurants across the country have been trying to assure customers of their hygiene standards, some of them are one of the best known. all over Japan they said their conveyor belts are going to stop, they're stopping the can conveyor, the main attraction really of those sushi restaurants and now they're turning to um for direct ordering where the staff brings people in.

Sushi, are there reports? other people continue to copy this, there are more videos and they have appeared again. Apologies to our viewers, but some of those videos showed people licking communal chopsticks, for example, just the ones on the table, or again trying to touch the sushi as it moved along. on um on the conveyor belt and this is really, you know, joking aside and again, you know it's not very appetizing but it has affected the industry, these restaurants and restaurant chains have already been struggling with prices be

cause

of the pandemic. covid-19 and because of the supply chains because of the war in Ukraine, so this is a real problem for many companies because they had to raise some prices, now they have to fight with this unhygienic and unhealthy behavior and they are trying to reassure.

Customers will come, so some of the restaurant spokespersons, for example, said: Look, you know, this is part of Japanese culture. This conveyor belt. Sushi. We want to preserve it. We want to reassure customers. They say this behavior is extremely concerning. Shima. Thank you very much Shaima Khalil, there for us.