Eating Like This Got 2 Men Arrested
A man dipped his used chopsticks into a communal bowl of pickled ginger at a restaurant in Osaka, Japan—and he and a friend have been arrested for it. The Guardian reports that it’s the latest development in the wave of “sushi terrorism” that has emerged in Japan. The viral prank has diners licking and otherwise messing with food items at restaurants that serve sushi on conveyor belts, leading in some cases to arrests. In this most recent case, the arrested men—Toshihide Oka, 34, and Ryu Shimazu, 35—weren’t at a sushi restaurant but at the gyudon (beef bowl) chain Yoshinoya.
The two were arrested on suspicion of obstructing business and destroying and dirtying property at the restaurant, which they visited on Sept. 29, reports the Japan Times. A video shot by Oka and posted to social media shows Shimazu using chopsticks he had eaten with to take bite after bite from a square container containing the ginger, reports the AP. The men reportedly told police they were just trying to do something funny and make people laugh.
Yoshinoya, which has 1,000 locations in Japan, learned of the video in February and went to police. It says it had to close the location the men visited in order to disinfect all its containers. Shimazu was arrested in March and Oka was arrested this week. The charges carry fines and prison terms of up to three years each.