Restaurant chain in Japan suffers $125 million stock market loss after video of customer spitting on conveyor-belt sushi goes viral

A boy has been arrested for licking a soy sauce dispenser and putting his saliva on pieces of conveyor belt sushi at a restaurant in Osaka, Japan. His dinner companion recorded the video and posted it to social media, where it went viral, getting millions of views.

The restaurant called police, who arrested the boy. The restaurant is also pursuing civil actions against the boy, claiming it has "suffered reputational and financial damage" after "its stock fell by 5 percent, or nearly $125 million," reported TV Asahi.

From The Washington Post:

The videos appear to be a spillover of an existing Japanese YouTube trend, known as "meiwaku-douga," or nuisance videos. These YouTubers film videos just to get attention for causing trouble. Some show them eating food at a supermarket before paying, writing graffiti over a message board about someone's memorial service or walking around during a covid wave without a mask.

But those videos mainly stayed on YouTube, where they are less likely to go viral in ways that videos can take off on Twitter and TikTok. Japan is the largest international market on Twitter behind the United States.