Sad tale of a Japanese Uber Eats delivery gone wrong

One of the most popular choices for hungry diners looking for a quick bite to eat in Japan is the humble gyudon beef bowl. Available at supermarkets, local restaurants, and global fast food chains, these meals of rice with thin slices of stewed beef and onions on top are now even accessible to people at home, thanks to delivery services like Uber Eats.

One hungry Japanese diner, who goes by the handle @sauntm online, decided to use Uber Eats to get some gyudon delivered recently, but the meal never reached their stomach…because it went through a cycle inside their washing machine instead.

Take a look at the tweet they shared below:

“I don’t know what this means, but I washed gyudon and now the inside of the washing machine is a disaster zone.”

Looking closely at the tweet above, you can see a load of clothes inside the washing machine, but at the bottom there’s a pile of rice and beef that definitely doesn’t belong there.

▼ After taking the clothes out of the washing machine, this is the sad mess that was left behind.

You might be wondering how the heck a tasty bowl of beef and rice wound up inside a load of laundry, and according to @sauntm, a sleepy head and confusing series of events led to the laundry chaos.

In the above tweet, @sauntm explains the situation by saying:

“Yesterday morning the intercom rang so I woke up and went to the door, received a delivery and put it on the washing machine → without checking to see what it was, I went back to bed → when I got up again, I realised it must’ve been a pickled vegetable and gyudon set from Matsuya → I didn’t order it and all I could see in there was a tub of pickled vegetables, so I thought it was odd but I just ate the pickled vegetables anyway → I did the laundry → now this.”

They went on to say that the Uber Eats driver must’ve made the delivery by mistake, and as the driver didn’t ask them to sign for anything, the error went unnoticed at the time. They also apologised for the fact that someone out there must be wondering where their gyudon-and-pickles set disappeared to.

After clearing out the machine, though, the lid of the container revealed that the “culprit” wasn’t a beef bowl from Matsuya, but one from rival chain Sukiya. The label on the lid reads “Takana Mentai Mayo Gyudon”, which is described as “Gyudon with Mustard Leaf, Cod Caviar & Mayonnaise” on Sukiya’s English-language menu.

▼ It also says “tsuyudaku” or “soupy”, meaning it contained more broth than usual.

▼ For reference, this is what a bowl of Takana Mentai Mayo Gyudon from Sukiya is meant to look like.

@sauntm says they felt bad about wasting the food, leaving the message:

“Sukiya, I’m sorry I went and wasted a bowl of gyudon.”

The gyudon disaster tweet quickly went viral, racking up over 250,000 likes in just a couple of days and more than 1,000 comments, including:

“I once washed Chinese cabbage.”
“I put mackerel through the laundry one time and all the clothes stank like fish.”
“A friend of mine added some crab rice gruel powder to the washing by mistake.”
“And I thought tissues in the wash were bad!”
“So is gyudon your new fabric softener now?”

It looks like @sauntm won’t be swapping fabric softener for gyudon anytime in the near future, as the mess took quite a while to clean up. Even now there are still a few holes in the bottom that have rice stuck inside of them.

So next time you order something from Yoshinoya, Matsuya, Sukiya or any other popular chain, be sure to keep the delivery well away from the washing machine. Especially if it’s one of the rare, limited-edition porcelain bowls from Yoshinoya. That would be a prickly mess to clean up!

Source: Twitter/@sauntm, Net Lab Yoshinoya
Featured image: Flickr/Dejan Krsmanovic
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