/ Cory Doctorow / 11:18 pm Sun Mar 1, 2009

Sending your video camera around the sushi conveyor

Ella sez, "A friend of mine asked to put her camera on the conveyor belt at a local kaiten sushi restaurant. People's reactions as they discover that they're being filmed are fairly humorous."

Kaiten (conveyor) sushi time in real Japan (Thanks, Ella!)

88

  2. Whew! That kitchen scene was like wondering whether the Von Trapps were going to make it over the Alps.

  3. Translation: These stupid Americans are creating health code violations in our Sushi place… We should steal their camera.

  4. Cinematography is [usually] great on a dolly, train, or some other mechanical track. Great share!

  5. Unfortunately for them, this was the very first time that these tourists attempted this. Flush with success, they tried to duplicate this video in other countries during their world tour of conveyor-belt based food delivery. They were never able to avoid either having their camera stolen, being beaten senseless by the other enraged diners, or both.

  6. This is the best piece of online video I’ve seen in days. It’s the best ad they never made or a perfectly viable $100,000 installation (call it ‘Raw Humanity’ and send me a check).

    Brava!

  7. ths is so funny- it’s my friend Jennie! this is what happens when you live in Hokkaido for too many years, I guess… ah, homesickness…

  8. Hey BoingBoing – I signed up after all these years for the following comment:

    This video reminds me of one of an incredibly beautiful song/video combination.. probably the most serene music video you’ve ever seen..

    Shrift – Lost in a moment (you may know the singer from that “this must be underwater love” track by Smoke City)

  10. already been done…

    Can we not talk about Japan.. Maybe for a week? There are 180 some-odd countries out there, and I feel all boingboing ever goes on about is Japan, Steampunk, and DRM. Anyone have anything to submit from Tehran? Grozny? North Philly?

    1. Anyone have anything to submit from Tehran? Grozny? North Philly?

      Suggest A Link is right up there at the top of every page. Right up there. No money down. No background security check. Just the opportunity to suggest a link.

  12. >>RANCOR01

    >There are 180 some-odd countries out there, and I feel all boingboing ever goes on about is Japan

    I would love the crap out of a “Switzerland Week.” Can we please do “Switzerland Week?”

  13. Haha.. The sushi chef guy in brown called them “Gaijin-san”..

    Thats like putting a “Mr.” before calling someone a negro.

  14. OvA made a really good sushi train video for their cover of Silver Wings. The squirming hipsters are pretty funny but the adorable lady at the end is the best. Sadly though, it does not feature a trip through the kitchen.

  15. >>Can we not talk about Japan.. Maybe for a week?

    …its just a phase …like tubeway maps & disney …well maybe not disney …thats more like an obsession

  16. Makes a great tracking-shot, reminds me of the camerawork on Fellini’s “Amacord”.

    My only experience with a Sushi conveyor-belt was in Duke Nukem 3D.

  18. I read the New York Times every day and dammit, it has all that news about New York! I’m thinking of cancelling my subscription unless they switch their coverage to knitting in Outer Mongolia.

  20. @ #14

    No, gaijin has nowhere near the stigma as the word ‘negro’. Gaijin simply means foreigner. Only gaijin think it means something worse. ^_^

    Most of them are simply saying, “Wh..what is this? What’s that?” but the only lady holding up her two fingers and saying “futatsu” was joking that she’d like to order two of them (much like you would order nigiri.)

    Awesome stuff!

  21. Three minutes of wondering… am I really going to waste another minute/two minutes/three minutes watching people who don’t want to be filmed eating their food?

    Well there you go… the answer to the third question was nope, so I can say yah! I beat you all by four minutes… but am left with the nagging feeling I may have missed the best bit.

    I agree there seems to be a Japan/steampunk/DRM bias to Boingboing at the moment. I frequently suggest items that don’t fall into those categories, but they don’t often get chosen so that doesn’t actually affect the proportion of content in those areas… it requires the people doing the choosing to choose the other stuff.

    I’d like to hear it for Norway-related stories… you hardly ever hear anything about Norway *anywhere* except when their majors get wheeled out to tell the UK how rubbish they are at dealing with unusual snowfall.

    Who can find a wonderful thing for Norway?
    Fee

  22. #21

    Who said the word “negro” had negative connotations? Ever heard of the United Negro College fund?

  23. This is hilarious because of all the horror stories about what goes on in the backroom of a sushi conveyor.

  24. I am surprised no one walked out with… blue plates = 2$… look mom, they have $2 digital cameras.

    … I think the kids at one of the tables had that idea.

  25. This is a fantastic video.

    I don’t care if it’s been done before. I don’t care if we’ve been seeing a lot of Japan-related posts. This is a fun, great little video and it cheered me up this morning.

  26. translations.
    mostly, they’re expressions of surprise, “eh?” “what the …?” “what’s that?” and the like.

    The young girls (@3:50 – 4:00) did say “tasty camera” (umai kamera), “camera going around?” (kamera mawatteru) and some background chatter I couldn’t catch :(

    The sushi chefs are wondering why it’s there, guessing that it’s a customer’s device. This is then confirmed by one of the other staff.

    Amuzing gaijin! Getting away with things that the natives would never consider!

    Nifty video!

  27. If you tried that at the sushi train in George St, Sydney, you’d only get your camera stolen :-(

  28. Fantastic! At the same time I’m watching them as the camera goes around, it’s almost as if they’re looking at me. I know it’s just the camera, but it feels a bit like a portal.

  29. “kamera mawatteru” = “they’re filming it?”
    (camera-go-round=camera-in-action)
    cool pun.

  30. Sushi-train movies are a great trend developing; life is passing by, the camera is passing by; the emotions do not still and neither does the camera. (These videos also show the shortest distance between two points is a right angle *pivot-turn*)

    I thought the camera was a goner for sure when it got the to kitchen. At first it looked liked the lady was saying “Oh great, not another one.” The pacing in the scene actually went off without a hitch, creating the right amount of tension, from the long-shot of her realizing a camera is there, to the medium-shot of the guy saying to let it go around, to the close-up of her hand before being released back into the wild. Life can be so artful in the right conditions, and with no control necessary.

    I think the point of putting this up is to show the difference between cynical Americans who put up posts about how the camera will get stolen or somebody will respond with “Oh great, not another one” and how Japanese look so fruitfully happy by the gesture. Really, how many times have I been to the sushi place and wanted to do this but didn’t.

    (Leaves before someone calls him “Plastic Bag Guy”)

  31. to the close-up of her hand before being released back into the wild.

    OMG, i thought the same, when she picked up the camera first, i was thinking, OH NO, she’s gonna take it back to the people!.. And then when they put it back down, i was actually relieved, glad to see it was on it’s journey again.

  32. For some reason this reminded me of the slow moving inanimate object epic of my youth, Paddle To The Sea.

  33. Is it just me or is this a perfect advert for the awesomeness of Japanese society. Nobody grabbed the camera or made a fuss. Everybody either politely ignored the camera or had fun with it.

    So far this year I don’t think a week has gone by that I haven’t seen something that makes me think about going to live in Japan or at the very least have a very long holiday there.

    Maybe when I inevitably lose my job I should emigrate.

  34. Crazy, I know the whole group in that video!

    Last time I was at Kaiten sushi in Iwamizawa, they paraded a whole live salmon around the restaurant before laying it down and serving it. Best salmon sashimi ever!

  36. Sorry, you think BB’s focus is *lately* shifted to be about DRM, Disney, steampunk, copyright, etc etc? Which blog have you been reading for the past 9 years? Because I’m here to tell you, the one I’ve been *writing* all that time has been about exactly that.

    IOW, you’ve come to a blog that’s about subject X and demanded to know why it isn’t a blog about subject Y.

    The answer is simple: “Because it’s a blog about subject X.”

  37. This is so good. I mean, using the same idea, one can make a whole short with a choreographed crew. The camera was put in a stable place too which minimized shaking making it a very good video. Pure genius.

  44. Seems the younger they are, the more accepting / apathetic they seemed to be about being filmed. Sad.

  46. #40 Lies, all lies I tell you!

    Personally I’m very fond of lutefisk, especially with some riven Brunost (Brown-cheese) on top. If you want to list crazy shit (we) Norwegians eat, how about Smalahove. West-coast Norwegians are batshit-insane.

  47. I think this would make an good music video if you did it in a high-end place with much more interesting people and got the right music.

  48. I would love to see this video put to music. I’m trying to think of an appropriate song. Something not too beat-heavy, but upbeat. Or maybe something a little wistful?

  50. Using a wireless camera might help to mitigate the camera-being-stolen problem. I look forward to future sushi conveyor + happy-slapping video hybrids ;-)

  51. am i the only one who now wants to see what the camera looked like? i want to see what they were all seeing!

  53. Hey! Great video!

    Its a strange voyeuristic type of anthropology…

    Elegant to its very core – I hope that this video can survive for a long time. Its like some great cultural fossil just waiting to be preserved and rediscovered in 1000 years.

  55. Not to be “that guy” and not to take a stance one way or another, but I find it interesting that the site which rails against CCTV and the taping of people without their knowledge or consent finds this (wonderful!) video so appealing when it borders on (or even crosses) some of those same lines.

  56. Already done?

    Who *really* cares if this has already been done before?

    This video was fun and a nice diversion. Something doesn’t have to be new and unique for it to be fun, interesting and boingboing worthy.

  57. Not enough wonderful stuff from Liechtenstein! We BoingBoing readers demand more news from Liechtenstein! Wasn’t that the inspiration for The The Mouse that Roared?

  58. Sir Cory, hope you won’t mind my long post.

    Since the kitchen part is the only part with big blocks of Japanese, I’ll translate for you all what I can make out. (The rest of it is just “what is that?/A camera?/Ah! a camera’s going round/Why have they put a camera going round? type stuff, like others have said.)

    Kitchen staffer #1(glasses)- “Huh? What’s this? There’s a camera going round.” Other lady off camera- “what’s wrong?” 3rd lady, laughing- “hey- it’s ok on a blue plate! (as if she’s saying cameras are a blue plate special item, lol)”

    Various staffers: “huh? what’s that?”

    Off camera lady: “The customer’s inside? Who’s (is) this?” Lady holding plate, setting it down: “There’s a camera here someone may have forgotten! (she’s being nice but stern about it, clearly irked)”

    The first lady (in glasses)- “Yeah, that’s it, they’ve forgotten it… (sounding concerned)” Walking away, holding camera on plate: “It’s not raw (unintellegable). Coffee jelly for (customer) #30!”

    Older lady’s voice off camera again: “It still hasn’t come (a response from the front staff[?])” Lady holding plate: “(I) haven’t said anything (to them/anyone)” Young girl- “Really?” Camera plate holding lady: “Yeah” Older lady in background: “Put it back/out (the camera) this time- it’s a mistake! (young girl laughing at that)”

    Walking with plate- “Coffee jelly for #30!” RINGS BELL: “We’re in trouble.” Sushi chefs come. Lady: “This was going around and taking video…” Sushi chef- “Ah, this, it’s probably a customer’s. Umm, it’s a foreigner.” Lady- “they put it out (on here)?” Chef- “Yeah, they tried putting it out, to take (a video). Of the, er, of the scenery.”

    Plate goes round, back to girls- Sushi Chef to girls: “Oh, it came back, didn’t it? (sounding nice at the end of a fun experiment, but slightly, ever so slightly irked at them, as if “ok, but please don’t do that again, ok?)”

    That’s it. Hope my translation helps the fun a bit, the ladies in the kitchen were good sports about these girl’s experiment. It was a rather rude but fun act, and they only got away with it because they were foreigners- the staff was nice about it, but the girls really should have asked first/known better. This kind of behavior is what makes Japanese sigh that foreigners are rude because they don’t know any better…

    That said, I thought this was friggin’ HILARIOUS! Thanks for posting it- I live out near this area in Hokkaido ^_^

  59. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

    Great video! Now I wish every eatery had a conveyor belt. Japanese can’t be the only people that are interesting to watch while eating.

  60. #14 & #23,

    I once got called down by a prominent civil rights leader for failing to capitalize “Negro” in a memo.

    Wonder why MLK didn’t find the word offensive?

  61. @UncommonSense #57

    >”What has been will be again,
    >what has been done will be done again;
    >there is nothing new under the sun.”

    I’m not sure I’d use that quote in this context – I reckon video cameras and sushi conveyors would have seemed pretty damn novel back when the book of Ecclesiastes was being written!

  62. # 53;
    As to why this is fun when CCTV is oppressive, this isn’t being filmed by the government with the intent to deprive citizens of their rights. No-one will be named a threat to society because of this footage. (now that it’s digital can we still call it footage?)
    And all of the people knew they were being filmed. They commented on the camera going past. If they were really bothered, they could have found the owners of the camera and requested that their face be removed from the video. Can’t do that with a CCTV camera owned by the state.

  63. I have to admit, I was imagining the camera was a katamari getting rolled around, gathering size. I thought any second one of those people would let out a yelp and get rolled right up. I was even humming a little katamari damacy song while watching. La….la la la…

  65. A day without steampunk, Japan, Cory’s Hugo nominated books, tubeway maps, Disney, guerrilla knitting, copyright or DRM… is a day without BoingBoing!

  66. What a superb invasion of privacy. People can’t even go out to eat anymore without having a video camera in their face. We are Big Brother…

  68. It was a very cute video, and I’ve always wondered myself about what went on in the mysterious part of the sushi train. However, I can see why the kitchen lady was kind of upset about it; it would be sad if the restaurant got nailed with some obscure health code violation because they were being cool.

  69. I’m someone that really hates being filmed by strangers. To me it feels like a violation. If I’m going about my business in a city and some tourist with a video camera is doing a slow pan to capture the street life, I’ll do my best to avoid the line of fire. If someone’s obnoxious about it or explicitly filming me, I’ve been known to make a rude gesture, or at least glare at them to express my distaste.

    So, my first thought on seeing this video was “Wow, there are a lot of people who don’t seem to mind being filmed, even during the relatively intimate act of eating.”

    That said, it’s a wonderful video to watch, almost profound. The somewhat somber-looking family unit around 2:20 is my favorite.

    @Antinous: I’d put a quieter Philip Glass piece behind this, not Yackety Sax!

  70. Some people can’t tell the difference between surveillance and whimsy.

    This this a wonderful thing. It gets the Haggis Seal of approval.

  71. I have ta say I was watching it with a mixture of annoyance, interest, anger, and amusement. I dislike CCTV cameras. But it made me ask why this was different, to me, to having someone sitting there and watching? What makes a camera different to a person?

    Sure, those people didn’t consent to being filmed and having themselves posted on BoingBoing. Which makes me feel awkward in watching it. But then, neither do most people in holiday snaps.

    Interesting, amusing, and yet somehow as disturbing as a video of a fatal plane crash.

    Made me think. Which is never a bad thing.

    I wonder if The Green Pedo is out there, watching this video with those happy kids…

  72. I like Japan, steampunk, and cool trips through sushi restaurants. And I like smiling for (nearly) seven minutes.

  73. Well, I’ve got an older one of these, made by myself in Munich (Germany), right there on YouTube. It also made it into a local Munich Newspaper…

  75. Watching this while listening to Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach” was a marvelous experience…

    – yeff

  76. >>Getting away with things that the natives would never consider!

    Must be, all five videos in this thread (so far) are by gaijin.
    The one by Alex Mazzarella is pretty cool too with a surprising intermezzo.

    >>I think the point of putting this up is to show the difference between cynical Americans who put up posts about how the camera will get stolen or somebody will respond with “Oh great, not another one” and how Japanese look so fruitfully happy by the gesture.

    Would think so too, though they didn’t touch it in Hong Kong or Munich either. I suppose we never get to see the stolen ones.

    >>It was a rather rude but fun act, and they only got away with it because they were foreigners- the staff was nice about it, but the girls really should have asked first/known better. This kind of behavior is what makes Japanese sigh that foreigners are rude because they don’t know any better…

    They draw the line at talking dildos though. (see #56)

    >>What a superb invasion of privacy. People can’t even go out to eat anymore without having a video camera in their face. We are Big Brother…

    Agreed. Kids these days probably take this for granted though.

  77. For people looking for ambient background music, zacislost in #8 suggests this, but I think the specific link in that comment has been removed.

    It’s sorta the “something a little wistful” 13strong suggests in #50. But unlike purly’s wishes in #49, it’s a much lower-end place with people no more or less interesting in and of themselves than those seen above.

    I’m pretty clear on the differences between this and CCTV, as laid out by heydemann3 in #65, but I’m kinda interested in how this differs (or doesn’t?) from film crews needing to get signed consent forms from people appearing in their films. Of course, it’s not necessary for people’s home movies, but when those home movies become, say, YouTube sensations…? I guess there’s no direct commercial interest being served here, or is that another topic entirely? I got intrigued by all this, while filling out a Creative Commons questionnaire recently, trying to figure out definitions for “commercial use”…

    …but never mind: that shouldn’t distract anyone from the singular pleasure of this camera’s journey. Personally, I like it better with the music of the moment, than with an added soundtrack. And thanks to bastardnamban @ #60, and others, for the translations–that was why I clicked over to the permalink in the first place!

  78. @siempre la luna #15
    that “video” was shot at sushi ichiban (nee takahashi) in portland. the sushi train there is famous for weird things finding their way onto it. i’ve been flirted with (through notes written on chopstick sleeves) and filmed (with cellphones and cameras) numerous times as i ate there (never minded in either case), and i’ve even sent a gift ticket or two to my events around for anyone who felt like grabbing them. it’s doubtful a camera would get stolen there or anywhere else because odds are, the person who owns it is usually tracking its progress. i think a would-be thief would be too self-conscious to try nabbing it. it’s not like you can just run out of there and slyly jump the bill at the same time.

  81. very cool, I liked how the water explained that they should not worry, it was done by enthusiasts…

  83. as some of the other comments here mention..please take the time to look at a beautiful variation of this on vimeo

    a sushi conveyor short film made in 1998.

    achingly simple, beautiful soundtrack too.
    can the moderators feature a still/ link to it?
    lovely stuff

    sebastien- londres

  84. BastardNamban: Thanks for posting the translation. Now I know that Japanese culture makes even the SCRIPT of life perfect. (laughs)

  85. @Dole: Holy fuck. They actually make that? And the Japanese even make THAT music work! (Goes to compare other videos to see if any scenario with a group of humans works with that music.) Nope. It’s the Japanese.

    And, in case you’re wondering if I’m racist, yes. I am. I think Japanese people are a race of mystical unicorns who can do no wrong. If you think that perfect timing could have worked for any race of people, know this. The fact is, this video contains sushi. Sushi on a conveyor belt. Sushi on a conveyor belt with nothing but Japanese people around it. I don’t think a conveyor belt surrounded by mystified NORWEGIANS would have worked as well, regardless if it lacked a difference in reactions.

    @tuktuk: That’s the place I was thinking of when I said I had wanted to do this myself. That video you linked to would be an awesome existentialist life’s-end movie if it weren’t for the bad frame rate. It is the opposite of good, like the one from the Japanese. I will call it Log.

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