Gyudon, Beef Bowl

Here's today's lunch. Gyudon or beef bowl from Yoshinoya. Gyudon is typical Japanese fast food. It's sliced beef and onions on top of a bowl of rice. It's made with a lower quality grade of beef and most gyudon is cheap imported beef from America or Australia. In recentt years, there was a bit of a crisis for gyudon because of mad cow disease (BSE in Japan) and imports stopped for a time. The red stuff you see is a ginger pickles garnish. I also added a little red pepper from the packet included.

Yoshinoya is Japan's most famous Gyudon restaurant and can be found in many countries; of course Asia, like Taiwan and Korea, but also in some places in America. Yoshinoya caters to a business lunch crowd, so restaurant are small, with mostly counter space. People eat quickly and leave. Actually, Junko told me in her Tokyo days, at that time women didn't go there. It was a man's place. It's different than slightly cheaper competitor Sukia, which offers a wider menu and caters more to families. We went to Sukia last time. A Yoshinoya restaurant recently came to Yonago, so today we tried it. 

It was busy lunch time and we just got take out. There are different sizes; futsu-mori (regular size), O-mori (big size), and toku-mori (extra big). We got two futsu-mori and two toku-mori. Remember, we're taking about Japan, so their extra big is a small to average American size. I still had enough room to help Rika with hers. It was actually my first time to eat Yoshinoya. It was  really good. I was impressed with Hana, though. She got the toku-mori. It took her a while, but she finished it off by herself. That's my girl.