School Lunch in Japan

This "5 random school lunches" entry will show you exactly what we get fed at school in a typical week, but for now let's have a look at how lunchtime works.

In my school, the children of my weekly host class come and collect me and my (weird) food from the teacher's room. Then we go to their class and I sit around for ages while they serve each other. Then we say いただきます (itadakimasu) and eat in about 5 minutes, then sit around waiting for the end-of-eating chime. This is usually 5+ minutes of loneliness.

It has become even less fun than it sounds.

Don't get me wrong, I love my kids. But if they ever work up the courage to speak to me it's just to ask what my favourite colour is, how tall I am and if I have a girlfriend. I've taught them for 18 months, they know this stuff already.

Talking Japanese to them just makes them laugh... :(

When the bell rings we say our いただきました (itadakimashita), "wash" our plates and bowls with 100ml of water and a pair of chopsticks and then go our separate ways. Then everyone except me brushes their teeth. I don't brush mine directly after eating because dentists say it's bad for your teeth.

Milky rice-fed anecdote rant:

• Lunch comes with 200ml of milk. I don't drink it because I have an allergy, but it took several months for that to be accepted by my school. They said they couldn't cancel my order without a doctor's note. I couldn't get one for various reasons; mostly being almost as far away from my doctor as is physically possible. In the end I appealed to the Board of Education who told them to stop being so stupid and not order me it.
  It may sound petty, but that saves me about 12,000yen a year. Plus I don't drink it for God's sake. I'm not sure why they made such a big deal about it, but it seems that being just like everyone else is a very important part of school life. On that subject, let me recommend an excellent book: Becoming Japanese: The World of the Pre-School Child by Joy Hendry. Check out our recommended book page for more info.
• And another thing. I try to keep to a pretty strict diet, not to mention that a mountain of rice midday makes me very sleepy. I started to give away most or all of my rice (and bread) every day to hungry looking students. Then one day a teacher complained about me! The same day the Head Of Teachers came to have serious words with me about being in Japan and having to do things the Japanese way. Apparenly that extends to overeating at lunchtime. "I'm on a diet," I said, to which he responded "The government told us that eating rice at lunchtime will not make us fat." WHAT??

Two of my friends here have gone as far as to actually take their own lunch to school, though this is definitely frowned upon and is not recommended. Nevertheless, at my school there's a gaijin student (born here) who brings her own lunch every day. I get the strong impression that she's a bit segregated for various things like that which she does differently. More so, perhaps, than for her skin tone. Her parents seem like very smart people, but for some reason they've made this massive error in judgement which is only enforcing the very Japanese idea that "foreign" people and Japanese people are completely different.

Anyway, that's the end of the rant and hopefully you've learned something about working in a school in Japan.

PS: On some occasions (like sports day or something) when there is no school lunch, the teachers order bento boxes and eat in the staff room. They suck.