This is a restaurant in a boarding house district near Waseda University in Tokyo.

A set menu featuring both hamburger steak and fried chicken is popular here.

Beyond the taste, it is popular because customers can enjoy unlimited servings of white rice to go with the meal.

[Student: I don't have much money, so it's great to be able to eat a lot for free.]

The restaurant cooks about 25kg of rice every day for hungry students. Around this time last year, there was a period when they had to use cheaper U.S.-grown rice because they could not source domestic rice.

Now, the situation has completely changed.

[Restaurant Operator: It’s something that never happened in the previous years, but I’ve been getting calls from wholesalers asking me to buy rice two or three times a month.]

The operator added that rice farmers have even reached out directly to offer their products, and the price, which was 900 yen per kilogram last year, has now fallen below 600 yen.

Rice prices at supermarkets have also dropped.

As of the end of last month, the average price of a 5kg bag of rice sold at supermarkets nationwide was 3,673 yen, down 550 yen from the same period last year.

Now, farmers are worried about a surplus of rice.

[Farmer: This is all rice harvested last year. There is too much rice left. I am worried because it isn't selling.]

Usually, last year's rice should have been sold out by this time, but they say 400 tons still remain.

The problem is that new rice will start hitting the market in two months.

[Farmer: Once the new rice comes out, last year's rice becomes 'old rice.' It will be even harder to get a fair price for it then, so we are in a situation where we have to sell it even if we take a loss.]

According to the Japanese government, private rice inventory as of the end of April reached its highest level in the past 10 years.

While rice shortages and price spikes were the main issues last year—to the point where the government released hundreds of thousands of tons of stockpiled rice—the situation has reversed into a supply glut because rice production significantly exceeded expectations while consumption fell short of projections.

Experts predict that rice prices will continue to decline until the new harvest is released.

(Video reporting: Mun Hyunjin)