B2 – Upper Intermediate
Sushi is one of the most popular Japanese dishes all around the world. Recently, some pranks have become viral on social media where some pranksters are seen meddling with the food at some conveyor belt sushi restaurants.
This lead to customers rethinking about going to this kind of restaurants, police conducting investigations, and restaurants’ shares plummeting.
Read the article about a series of pranks at conveyor belt sushi restaurants that is dubbed as “sushi terrorism”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/03/wave-of-sushi-terrorism-grips-japans-restaurant-world
Vocabulary Questions:
- What does “meddle” mean, “Signature cuisine is at the centre of a police investigation after customers at revolving sushi restaurants posted video clips of themselves meddling with dishes.”? Use this word in your own sentence.
- What does ”egregious” mean, ”A clip of the most egregious culinary crime, which has been viewed almost 40m times on Twitter, shows what appears to be a teenager licking the open top of a communal soy sauce bottle and the entire rim of a teacup, which he then places back on a shelf.”? Give at least one (1) synonym of this word and use it in a sentence.
- What does “outpouring” mean? “The firm’s president, Kohei Nii, said he had been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support.” Use this word in your own sentence.
Discussion Questions:
- What is your reaction to this news? How does this affect your interest in going to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant?
- How can the restaurants bounce back from this controversy?
- What are your thoughts on the action by some conveyor belt sushi restaurants to install cameras above conveyor belts to monitor customers?
- How should these pranksters be punished?
4 replies on “Sushi Terrorism”
This news seems to me very disgusting. When a person goes to a restaurant, they think that everything will be treated with care since they will pay not only for the meal but also the attention of the service, the quality of the food and atmosphere of the place. I have never been to a conveyor belt restaurant but the most similar to this is the buffet restaurants. Food is spread along large tables, and everyone can take what they want. I do not like this type of restaurant for two reasons: for one thing, there is no limit to eat, and people will eat more than they need. On another hand, I see that people touch food with their fingers and it is not very hygienic.
When the image of a company is damaged due to that type of things, it is very difficult to bounce back. Maybe, people are capable of forgetting when they are given free or big discount food. Then, if other people see that the restaurant is crowded, they will be able to confide again and go there.
In my opinion, the installation of cameras above conveyor belts is not the solution to the problem, because the prankers will go on doing the same things and other people can feel uncomfortable if a camera is monitoring how or what they are eating.
The only way to punish the prankers is to set up very expensive fines to be paid just to compensate the losses which a restaurant can suffer from these actions. In addition, if there would be a connection among the different restaurants, they should share information about these people just to keep them away of these restaurants.
You put a lot of efforts in practicing your writing. Keep it up!
Take note of a few minor changes you can implement in these sentences to write them better:
Well done sharing your ideas about this topic.
1. What is your reaction to this news? How does this affect your interest in going to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant?
That didn’t surprise me because the method is not safe.
Although I’m not squeamish, I’m not very trusting of this type of service, so it obviously takes away all my interest.
2. How can the restaurants bounce back from this controversy?
In my opinion, there will be people who won’t never trust in them anymore. Anyway, I think they should change the system
3. What are your thoughts on the action by some conveyor belt sushi restaurants to install cameras above conveyor belts to monitor customers?
In my opinion is a good think to preserve security and health in the food, so if I was a customer, I’d rather to be recorded eating good food than a group of prankers would become viral a video where I was eating food after they had meddled with it
4. How should these pranksters be punished?
I think it would be good to give them a taste of their own medicine and force them to eat the leftover food from all the customers and work a few days cleaning dishes without pay.
Good work practicing your writing through this exercise.
See how this sentence can be made a bit better:
Keep practicing to improve more and more.