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The story
A video of a female chef pouring a huge amount of salt over a fish went viral on social media and became a hot topic on 5channel as well. Some pointed out how it differs from proper shiogama-yaki (salt-crust baking), others defended it as pricing that bakes in the cost of the performance along with the ingredients, while still others questioned the hygiene of handling a phone with bare hands — and the discussion even expanded into comparisons with sumo wrestlers scattering salt in the ring.
What people said
One of those 'ingredient purist' tribe members, huh?
Is there any other reason to do something like this?
It's probably that
That doesn't even cost 5 yen
Have you never bought salt at a supermarket, you middle-aged shut-in still living with your parents (kodo-oji)?
It's pretty big, how much would that even run…
I mean, salt's actually gotten pretty pricey too
Hakata no Shio (a popular salt brand) runs almost 400 yen
That's for 1kg, right? And that's retail, not wholesale
Even if it really is 400 yen per kg, 50g of that is only 20 yen
Even if the raw cost is 20 yen, they're obviously marking it up 20x on the price
People obsessed with 'raw ingredient cost' are seriously dense
You guys better think hard about which side you're on
Lmao the defenders bringing up shiogama-yaki (salt-crust baking)
Where's the shiogama-yaki element in this cooking method?
The only thing they have in common is using salt — if it's just excessive salt for show, that's a waste
The amount of salt 'needed' for shiogama-yaki (salt-crust bake)
The amount of salt 'needed' for shioyaki (salt-grilled fish)
Those are different dishes, so the comparison is off the mark
Looked it up and the purpose and method are totally different lol
Grilling with good, flavorful salt is the whole point — this basically says 'this place is for suckers who go for the show'
Phones are supposedly dirtier than a toilet seat
And right at the start she shoves it out of the way like it's in her hair
And she's adjusting its position with her bare hands, that's just done for
Phones are basically toilet-seat-level filthy
'Not for cost-performance guys' → wrong
'Not for normal, sane people' → correct
Sumo wrestlers scatter way more salt than this
That's the one that actually has no real point
Well, that one's a ritual though
If this fish or shrimp were cursed and needed a ton of salt dumped on them, everyone would totally get it
It's a holdover from when it was a Shinto rite to ward off evil spirits and pray for a bountiful harvest, so it technically still carries meaning
That's totally different
To begin with, that's not done as a joke. Though the times wrestlers goof around and fling huge amounts during regional tours, that's basically the same as this video
Background and Key Points
Shiogama-yaki, the technique posters invoke to defend the video, is a specific method: a whole fish is packed in a paste of salt and egg white and baked until it hardens into a shell, which seals in moisture and lightly seasons the flesh as it steams inside. It is not the same act as pouring loose refined salt over a fish on an open robata grill, which is why several posters call the comparison a category error. Robatayaki restaurants built around live, camera-ready hearth cooking have become a recognizable genre on Japanese social media, and stunts like this are usually aimed at video engagement as much as at diners in the room. On pricing, ordinary Japanese table salt runs only a few hundred yen per kilogram at retail, so the raw cost of the salt shown is trivial even by the thread’s own math.
The actual fault line in the thread is narrower than “wasteful or not” — it’s whether the shiogama-yaki defense holds up at all, with several posters concluding the two dishes share nothing but the word “salt,” and whether a near-zero ingredient cost invalidates charging for the show.
One claim readers should question: a poster asserts Japan has “basically infinite salt,” but Japan has almost no usable salt fields because of its humid climate, and domestic salt was a government monopoly (senbai seido) until deregulation in 1997 specifically because supply was historically scarce, not abundant. No one in the thread also notes that sumo’s salt-throwing (kiyome no shio) is a Shinto purification rite for the ring, not a food-preparation act, despite being pulled into the debate as a comparison.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Video] Female Chef: ‘Salt on Fish? This Much Is Normal’“.
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