OK, it’s not actually linguistics (just another dumb headline), but come on, “Super-salty pizza sends six kids to the hospital in Japan, linguistics blamed” (by Casey Baseel, SoraNews24) is a great story, and it does deal with Japanese:
Pizza, famously, is hard to screw up, so much so that “_____ is like pizza. Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good,” became shorthand for things in which acceptable quality is very easy to find. Here’s the thing about something that’s hard to screw up, though: When someone does somehow manage to screw it up, it’s probably going to be really, really bad. Case in point, a half-dozen teens in Japan recently sat down for some pizza, then ended up in the hospital from it. […]
The students had used a from-scratch recipe, with the task for some of the students being to make the dough for the pizza crusts. If you’ve never made pizza dough, you might be surprised to learn that salt is a crucial ingredient. […] The recipe the students were following called for three tsumami of salt. Tsumami is the noun form of the word tsumamu, which means to close the fingertips around something. In other words, “three tsumami” would mean “three pinches” of salt.
However, according to a statement from the Kitakyushu Board of Education following an investigation, the students in charge of making the dough weren’t familiar with the term tsumami, at least in this cooking context, and used a lot more. It’s unclear exactly how much salt they put into the dough, but they might have gotten confused by tsumami’s connection to tsumamigui, a combination of tsumami and an alternate pronunciation of kui/“eating.” Tsumamigui means to “nibble” on something, but by extension it’s also often used when talking about snacking on finger foods, where the image of using just the fingertips can sometimes get a little less ironclad.
With that in mind, it’s likely that the students in charge of making the dough took the recipe’s “three tsumami of salt” to mean not three pinches, but three handfuls, and so the dough contained an amount of salt several magnitudes larger than it was supposed to. Regardless of the exact nature of the misinterpretation, the six students who were hospitalized after eating the pizza were found by doctors to be suffering from symptoms caused by excessive sodium intake.
Thanks, Scopulus!
So is this the Japanese-recipe equivalent of the Spinal Tap “Stonehenge” scene in which 18′ and 18″ had gotten confused?
By George, I believe it is!
Way too much salt, and they couldn’t taste it right away?
I’m guessing there was beer involved.
“To alcohol – the origin and the solution of all of life’s problems!”
– Homer Simpson
Please, that’s “The cause of—and solution to—all of life’s problems.“
The article contains a link to a perhaps more cosmically-important Japanese-pizza story. https://soranews24.com/2026/01/14/kitkat-pizzas-are-coming-to-pizza-hut-japan/ They’ve come a long ways since 50 years ago when I was a kid living in Tokyo and “cuttlefish” was the most exotic local topping at the Shakey’s in Roppongi.
I obviously read this as three tsunamis of salt, which would presumably be quite a lot.
I kept reading it as “three tsunamis of salt” as well.
I also wonder whether a tsumami is really supposed to be closer to a pinch or to a dash (which is officially supposed to be two pinches). Either can be measured between two fingers, although I also have an actual measuring spoon for the latter, which I used just last night for both the cayenne pepper and Worcestershire sauce in a parsley-based salsa verde recipe. (The spoon is not labeled “dash,” of course, but “1/8 tsp.”)
Yes, I read it as ‘tsunamis’.
But what Lars said. How much beer do you have to drink to fail to notice that much salt? And aren’t they actually suffering alcohol poisoning? The symptoms seem similar. Blaming the sodium is a euphemism?
The spoon is not labeled “dash,” of course
Sets of measuring spoons marked “dash”, “pinch”, “smidgen” etc. are not rare.
I would not use my fingers for a pinch of cayenne pepper. Hijinks would be apt to follow.
I knew something seemed wrong!
(Auf den Alkohol! Den Ursprung – und die Lösung! – aller Lebensprobleme! But I had heard the original, too.)
Speaking of tsunami, I just encountered title wave. I wonder if that’s even an eggcorn.
Here’s the original link
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/20260210-GYT1T00579
https://www.city.kitakyushu.lg.jp/files/001192324.pdf
This is the city report which has more details.
I really doubt beer was involved as it was in a school. As a tsunami is about one or two grams, and cheese and pizza dough hide salt flavoring quite well, I imagine they kept adding, thinking no big deal and ended up with a teaspoon or so.