A touching gesture that is both heartwarming and potentially heartburning.

Currently, many areas in Japan are dealing with heavy snowfalls causing havoc in transportation routes across the country. One heavily hit area is Fukui Prefecture where, along Highway 8 running through Maruokamachi in Sakai City, a line of over 1,200 cars and trucks up to 30 kilometers long sat trapped as snow continued to pile up around them.

▼ Just loop this tweet about 2,500 times and you’ll get about one tenth of what it was like

And inside each of these vehicles were people growing increasingly tired and hungry. Luckily, many kind souls were there to help.

Employees of the Gyoza No Osho (King of Gyoza) branch along this stretch of highway banded together and began cooking up their stock of fired rice and ankake yakisoba which are fried noodles served in a thick soy sauce and loaded with vegetables and meat.

▼ “It looks like one of my company’s trucks stuck in Fukui’s heavy snow got some free stuff from Osho No Gyoza. Thank you Marukamachi Osho!”

Cooking all through the afternoon, they prepared about 500 servings and handed them out to cars all along the frozen highway. One truck driver from Osaka told NHK, “I’m really happy because there was no food and my stomach was empty. Thanks to them, I can keep working at clearing the snow around my vehicle.”

Actually, that Gyoza No Osho branch had been closed since 6 February because of the blizzard but had a large supply of unused ingredients that would have just gone to waste had they not prepared these emergency rations.

As such, readers of the new online were touched at this large act of greasy generosity.

“Those employees are also putting themselves in trouble. Good people.”
“That’s a nice warm story on a very cold day.”
“It’s nice to get good news like this.”
“That’s very commendable of them!”
“They are indeed worthy of the title ‘King of Gyoza.'”
“That’s a very clever way of advertising.”
“You can see the staff’s faces are red. That’s a wonderful thing they are doing.”
“If drivers had insisted on paying, that would be even better.”

A few suspected that this was some sort of publicity stunt, but it seems as though it was handled by lower level staff of this branch rather than executives forcing them out into the hard environment. The assistant manager Yukinori Nakayama said, “We just want to cheer up everyone who is stranded in their cars. I hope they can feel a little better.”

It was far from an isolated act of humanity either as elsewhere along the chain of stuck vehicles, other businesses and residents offered food and some trucks even offloaded their supplies to hand out to other motorists, many of whom had been stuck for over a day.

This also isn’t the first time Gyoza No Osho was impressed people with their altruism. Another branch in Kyoto gained fame for having provided free food to struggling university students for years. So, if you have a craving for some dumplings, why not choose the gyoza kings with a heart of gold… Just don’t go naked, because they really hate that.

Source: NHK News Web, Hachima Kiko
Top image: Twitter/@1207_takaya