The return of gyudon!

Yes, my friends, the day has finally come: gyudon has returned to Yoshinoya! Crisscross Japan’s story:

TOKYO — Fast-food restaurant chain Yoshinoya D&C Co resumed sales of “gyudon” beef-on-rice dishes Monday, about two years and seven months after removing the mainstay dish from its menu due to Japan’s ban on U.S. beef imports over fear of mad cow disease. Yoshinoya prepared some 1 million gyudon bowls at about 1,000 shops across Japan for Monday’s sales resumption.

It will continue to sell gyudon bowls Tuesday and after on a limited basis for the time being as U.S. beef imports remain slack since Japan lifted its ban on the imports in late July.

“I was waiting for this moment,” said Takanori Umeki, 24, a University of Tokyo graduate student who was first in line at Yoshinoya’s Yurakucho shop in central Tokyo.

The Yurakucho shop prepared 1,000 gyudon dishes, with the regular bowl priced at 380 yen, up 100 yen from February 2004, when Yoshinoya was forced to remove gyudon from its menu due to the U.S. beef import ban. Despite light rain, about 50 people formed a line before the shop began gyudon sales from 11 a.m.

“I have almost forgotten the taste of gyudon. I want to remember its taste today,” said Umeki, who waited in front of the shop from 11 p.m. Sunday.

“I don’t have absolutely no concern about the safety of U.S. beef but I am not too worried,” he said, adding the price hike of about 100 yen is unavoidable.

Tadao Kato, the 33-year-old chief of the Yurakucho shop, said, “We are confident about serving dishes that customers can eat safely because we are using meat fully checked.”

“We would like to win customer trust by serving delicious dishes.”

After eating a gyudon bowl at the Yurakucho shop, a 15-year-old junior high school student from Gyoda, Saitama Prefecture, said, “It was delicious. There is no change in the taste.”

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, supplies of American beef are still low, so expect today’s gyudon to sell out quickly. Here’s some more detail on the supply schedule:

Between Oct 1 and 5 as well as Nov 1 and 5, all Yoshinoya restaurants will sell a combined 1 million beef bowls daily.

Beginning Dec 1, all Yoshinoya restaurants will offer a limited number of beef bowls each day, the company said.

Let’s hope that American beef keepings rolling in, or we may see a return to the days of expensive pork-on-rice dishes.