Recently, a high school student took a video of putting store equipment in his nose at a fast food restaurant and posted it on social media, and his school even issued an official apology.
According to the Kyoto Shimbun and other Japanese media on the 20th, a student at Seikagakuen High School in Kyoto posted a video on social media of him playing with a blind rope in his nose at a fast food restaurant in downtown Kyoto.
The video in question showed a male student sneezing after putting the height adjustment cord of the window blind of the store into his nostril. The friend who was watching burst into laughter, and the 10-second video of this image has spread rapidly through X since the 15th, exceeding 6.4 million views.
Japanese netizens who watched the video criticized, “What’s funny about this?” “What the hell were you thinking?” and “It’s unusual and unsanitary.”
Some responded, “Isn’t it a representation of ‘Bakata’ in the past?” “Bakatta” is a combination of “Baka” and “Twitter,” which means “absurd” in Japanese, and refers to people who cause controversy by posting immoral and unsanitary mischief or criminal acts on social media. In 2013, the son of a convenience store owner posted a picture of himself in an ice cream refrigerator on SNS, and the headquarters closed the store permanently. Seikagakuen High School confirmed that the person in the video was a student and posted an apology on its official website on the 16th. The school said, “The student’s behavior is extremely nuisance and unacceptable, which defames the store,” adding, “The student himself is deeply reflecting on the situation and visited the store with his guardian and apologized himself.” He added, “We will take this situation seriously and thoroughly implement public morality and public manners education for all students along with apologies to those involved.”
The fast-food restaurant did not disclose whether it had filed a claim for damages or reported to the police, saying, “We will not answer media inquiries due to the privacy of the store.”
The incident became more controversial in conjunction with the recent “bakata” behavior of teenagers who have been spreading again in Japan. On the 14th, when a video spread of a high school girl touching sushi with her bare hands and licking the opening of a soy sauce bottle with her tongue at the large rotating sushi chain “Kurasushi”, Kurashi said, “We will consult with the police and respond strictly.”
Similar incidents have occurred in the past. In 2023, another sushi chain “Sushiro” released a scene in which a male student licks the entrance of a soy sauce bottle and stings sushi, causing the parent company’s stock price to plummet, and Sushiro filed a lawsuit for damages of about 67 million yen against the student.
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL
