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The story
Seventy-eight people who ate chilled crab ramen from a food stall at the “Azabu-Juban Summer Festival” in Tokyo’s Minato Ward came down with diarrhea and vomiting, and three were hospitalized. Minato Ward’s official announcement attributes the food poisoning to Salmonella, but stool tests on those affected reportedly also turned up norovirus, diarrheagenic E. coli, and Plesiomonas. On 5ch, discussion centered on the fact that the stall’s operator is a former MMA fighter, plus claims that the container apparently used to prepare the soup looked a lot like a bucket that had been used to keep live eels swimming just before the festival — fueling wild speculation about the real cause.
A shocking new fact has come to light in the case of the “Azabu-Juban Summer Festival,” held in Tokyo’s Minato Ward in August, where 78 people who ate a stall’s “chilled crab ramen” reported symptoms including diarrhea and vomiting, with three hospitalized.
Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Minato Ward announced that Salmonella had been detected in stool samples from 31 of those affected and two staff members, framing it simply as “Salmonella food poisoning” — but in reality, far nastier pathogens had turned up too.
Reading the press release on Minato Ward’s official website is shocking: stool samples from those affected tested positive not only for Salmonella, but also norovirus, diarrheagenic E. coli, and Plesiomonas.
Source: asagei.com / Read the original article here
What people said
This beats the Diarrhea Muffin incident (a notorious past Japanese food-poisoning scandal).
Food trucks are sketchy on hygiene too, honestly it's eat-at-your-own-risk territory.
Over a decade ago now, but when I visited Tokyo I ate street-stall takoyaki and kebab, and that night I got stomach pains and a full-on "flood from both ends." Never touched food from stalls like that again…
It looked like the kind of "Indian food" that ends up like this, and somehow that made weird sense lol
Well, they were literally serving something at that level of insanity.
This is purely a thought-experiment-level guess, but here's the hypothesis: even if the bucket was scrubbed clean with detergent after holding raw eel, Salmonella could still linger in the fine scratches on the plastic surface. Then, once nutrient-rich ingredients went in and sat unheated, the bacteria could have multiplied explosively inside the container…
https://x.com/orogongon/status/2095980246885626152
Someone else pointed out separately that the bucket used for live eels and the bucket used for the soup might be the same one. A lot of things line up if that's true.
Re: #249 looks suspicious. Plastic containers get scratched up, so bacteria cling on easily.
This theory seems on the money. Eels probably aren't kept in especially clean water while alive, so if soup went into that same bucket afterward, yeah, that's genuinely bad. Why not just use a pot?
So they let eels swim in a pail can, then poured soy milk into it to make soup lol. No wonder it caused food poisoning lol
A pail can isn't exactly meant for holding food ingredients in the first place.
The river water in Akita is actually drinkable, though.
When I went to Matsumoto I was a little weirded out seeing everyone casually filling plastic bottles with spring water. Are there really places where you can drink straight from a river?
Sure, if you're fine with catching hepatitis E or some parasitic infection.
Only after he properly takes responsibility, though.
He's aiming for Michelin? Without even learning the basics.
Yeah, that's right
Komeo's the one who looks like Akky when he smiles.
Background and key points of this story
Minato Ward and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government have officially described this as “food poisoning caused by Salmonella,” but the original article notes that norovirus, diarrheagenic E. coli, and Plesiomonas were also detected in the stool of those affected — meaning this can’t simply be reduced to poisoning by a single pathogen. It’s worth noting that the theory that circulated widely on the thread — that the container used to prepare the soup resembled a bucket that had held live eels just before the festival — is speculation based on a post on X (formerly Twitter), and has not been confirmed as the cause by Minato Ward or the stall itself. Because the stall’s owner is a former MMA fighter, he drew personal attention apart from questions of cooking skill or hygiene management, sparking a mix of defense and criticism. Some voices also raised suspicions of collusion with local government, though no evidence for this was presented.
*This article is compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5ch (News Express+) thread “BreakingDownŠi“¬‰Æ‚Ì“X‚ª’ñ‹Ÿc–ƒ•z\”ÔÕ‚èuH’†“Å78lv—â‚₵ŠIƒ‰[ƒƒ“‚©‚çuƒhƒuì‚̃„ƒoƒC‹Ûv‚ªo‚Ä‚¢‚½ š4 [Hitzeschleierš].”
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