Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/08/01/1-dead-and-many-ill-after-eating-eel-at-japanese-department-store.html
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is department store eel like giant eagle sushi, or is it common to eat these kinds of dishes in a japanese department store?
i only got to spend about three days in tokyo so i just ate onigirii from 7/11 in the mornings and yakisoba at days end… it was difficult if you weren’t gonna use translation software to look at a menu and order – restauraunts had little plastic recreations of the foods (and a price – often out of my range ;_; ) – but the department stores were a wall of text.
(And also, kind of boring, I went into one in Shibuya and it reminded me of an extremely clean Target.)
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The basement floor of department stores is almost always full of bento shops anchored by a high-end grocery store. The top floor is often full of restaurants. This appears to be the former, so they probably weren’t eaten on site.
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but it’s my understanding you can trust the bento shops usually?
that’s one of the things i feel no one talks about with tokyo – you’d wanna go to a business, show up, and there’s a little vertical bar of logos – even in cities like NYC i didn’t encounter this weird vertical reality where theres a series of escalators taking you to like seven different businesses
(not talking about the dept stores but just… places that in america would be apartments of business office space after the ground floor store were overwhelmingly floor after floor of businesses)
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Most of the ones in department stores are national chains, but improper handling can lead to staphylococcus aureus, as happened here.
That’s pretty common in East Asia. Office buildings that don’t look any different from apartment buildings, I mean. You just need to know which floor the business is on.
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so basically, what i’m getting at is they have a good reputation, this is unusual?
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It’s unusual at this scale, but it only takes a small mistake somewhere along the supply chain to have disastrous results. Food safety is generally taken seriously, but sometimes the suppliers and distributors will both assume that the other side took care of everything.
ETA: If you’re asking about the safety of food in Japan in general, I would say that the standards are better than North America, but not quite as high as some countries in Western Europe. Mass food poisoning events like this happen a couple of times per year here.
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Yeah - Europe generally got its shit together on this because otherwise, well, its shit would very much not be together. 
In UK, you don’t eat eels in a department store.
https://spitalfieldslife.com/2010/09/23/tubby-isaacs-jellied-eel-stall-aldgate/
Jellied eels for breakfast!
(No thanks.)
(Link will not onebox.)
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Where I grew up (Michigan) there were department stores with a few restaurants inside them. Usually some fast food, but also a sit down diner with limited hours and excellent coffee.
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Last year there was an outbreak from one of those restaurants where cold noodles float along a half-pipe and you dip them out. That could have been from an infectious customer. I don’t know the final outcome.
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Eel? Well there’s your problem right there.
*My dad loved eel. None of the rest of us would touch it.
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i like eel sushi, it’s got a certain flavor thats nice but it needs some rice to offset it
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Daddy?
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But in a cardigan. Sure, he could be a badass if he had too. Not the first choice, though.
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How were they caught?
Probably best not to watch this if you fancy some eel for lunch, the memory persists.
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You eat them in a hovercraft. /s
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That’s an Eel Cola. as you beat me to the Hovercraft.
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