The Campaign

The Swimming Sushi is a world first, sushi restaurant where sushi starts to swim. When you pick up the sushi made by the sushi chef from Ishinomaki, it changes to a fish, and starts to swim towards the front screen. The fish goes back to the sea where they were grown, and tells about their life stories including their growing environments. Then, the fish comes back and leaves a special message like “Sea you soon at Ishinomaki.” The sushi’s motion, moves people’s emotion. It was a great demonstration to show the freshness and traceability of the fish from Ishinomaki-city, the north east Japan famous fish market place. The more they know about the stories of the food, the more tasty it becomes. This phenomenon is proven academically. The Swimming Sushi created an entirely New Food Edutainment Experience.

Creative Execution

We developed both the interactive swimming sushi experience, and the fish’s original animation craft design. The Interactive technological design: When you pick up the sushi the weight sensor reacts and a shadow of the fish appears on the sushi by the projection mapping set above. When you pick up the sushi, the shadow of the fish changes to an animation of fish and starts to swim towards the front screen. Also by the motion sensor set in the table, you can enjoy the rippling wave pattern that reacts to your table touching motion. The original animation craft design: To show each fish’s growing environments, we cherished the Japanese traditional craft motif like block or fish print for the animation made for Ishinomaki’s several kinds of fish. Besides, we prepared documentary video of Ishinomaki’s fishing situations, radiation checking system and interview of people. We prepared websites and leaflets as well.

Results

All the participants loved the educational experience. 93% said, they “Want to eat more fish.” and most people said they got more informed and interested in fish than before. The Swimming Sushi grabbed the Media attention. By combining “Japanese traditional food” and “New technology”, the Swimming Sushi created an entirely new food “edutainment” experience. For the Japanese, it revived interest in fish. The Swimming Sushi experience is going to take place in other cities. Next time is October at Ishinomaki and will be on permanent display in Ishinomaki City. Also from the accurate information send by this event, we could send out that Ishinomaki’s fish is all radiation checked scientifically, also the people who knew about this event through media, and take it more positive.

By creating a totally new interactive food Edutainment experience, The Swimming Sushi moved people’s emotion directly by the sushi’s motion to love fish more. It was a great demonstration to show the freshness and traceability of the fish from Ishinomaki-city, the north east Japan famous fish market place. As Japanese interest and consumption of fish is declining, this new experience changed people’s attitude toward fish. It also changed people’s mind more positive toward the fish from Ishinomaki-city, where they were struggling from misguided reputational damage of radiation problems by the Great East Japan Earthquake. The experience spread through media widely.

From kids to adults, we wanted people to have more interest towards fish and to overcome a reputational damage of fish from this entirely new technological edutainment experience. About the accurate information like the fish from Ishinomaki is all safety checked, including the 3times radiation check, we filmed the real scene and proved it’s credibility. By the entertaining experience of the Swimming Sushi, we wanted to make food education more exciting and emotional. From this totally new experience, we planned to achieve PR effect to spread this experience widely. The Media filmed, we also filmed so that not only the people who was there to experience, but also the people who knew about it through media could experience the story too. http://bonipin.com/theswimmingsushi/? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t4R_U1tsGU