Japanese restaurant fines customers for not finishing meal

A restaurant in Japan is fining customers who don't finish their meals.

We first saw the story over at Gawker. RocketNews reports that Hachikyo, a seafood restaurant in Sapporo, charges customers who don't finish every last bit of food on their plates. The experience is kind of like being a kid again. But instead of not getting dessert for cleaning your plate, you walk away with a slightly slimmer wallet.

Blogger Midori Yokoyama at Gold Rush explained the fine is for a good cause. The restaurant owners want to honor the fishermen who brave dangerous conditions to provide the delicious food.

Customers who order the tsukko meshi, a bowl of rice topped with salmon roe, are warned ahead of time. "It is forbidden to leave even one grain of rice in your bowl. Customers who don't finish their tsukko meshi must give a donation."

No word on the size of the fine, but it is apparently rare that someone doesn't actually finish. Yokoyama wrote that he was initially nervous about ordering food that came with strings attached, but the waitress assured him that "hardly anyone leaves their tsukko meshi unfinished."

Below, a video of a masked Yokoyama visiting the restaurant...