Yoshinoya Employees May Lose Jobs Because of Internet Video

For some reason this was a top news story yesterday in Japan:

How many scoops of stewed beef can you pile onto a bowl of rice?

Two video-savvy cooks who tried to find out could find themselves out of jobs after the Japanese beef bowl chain Yoshinoya D&C Co. suspended them for posting a clip of their experiment on YouTube.

The three-minute clip, posted Nov. 30, had been viewed almost 480,000 times on the video-sharing site as of late Tuesday.

It shows a man in a Yoshinoya uniform heap ladle after ladle of steaming stewed beef onto a bowl of rice.

By the sixth scoop, the mound of stewed beef is twice as high as the porcelain bowl, with bits tumbling off the sides. The chef then goes on to make a huge corn salad.

“It’s just a disgrace to treat food this way,” said Yoshinoya official Haruhiko Kizu, adding that the clip made him “feel sick in the stomach.”

Company cooks are trained to top beef bowls with just one scoop of beef, he said.

The YouTube cook and his camera-holding accomplice _ both part-time employees at a Yoshinoya outlet in western Japan _ have been suspended and the company is considering further penalties, including dismissal, Kizu said.