If you are curious to see what type of food is served at school lunches, keep on reading this post, and check out my earlier post as well.

This one was pretty good, but a lot of it. Rice with stuff in it, sweet potatoes, scrambled eggs and soup.

Alphabet soup. I was sitting with kids in grade one, and they liked to put a letter on their spoon and then yell out any letter they knew. Very cute. I had this one again not long ago and they would get a letter on their chopsticks and ask me what letter it was. Very tiring.

Also potato with a garlic coating. A ham and cucumber sandwich. Was actually afraid that this was going to be a ham and chestnut sandwich. Crazy, I know, but school lunches are always crazy. I was sure they said “kyuuri” – cucumber, and it made more sense, but I was worried they said “kuri” – chestnut. I had to eat salty chestnut in rice once, it was not a pleasant experience, soooo salty. I didn’t think it went at all. I was lucky this time.

Deep fried bread. My first experience with that. Wow. Waaay too much oil. I know, that’s deep fried for you, but… wow.

Here’s a week or so in the life of me!

The week starts off with the water in the gutters all iced over. Coming from a country that is nice and warm always, stuff like this is exciting to me.

So at my middle school they were playing volleyball. At the end the winners played the teachers. OMG it was freezing inside that gym, I think I died. I didn’t have gym shoes either, but in the end one of the students let me borrow her shoes and I played for 2 minutes with the teachers, scoring one goal but also losing one goal. So I guess I contributed nothing.

An assembly after the volley ball. At things like this you bow before and after someone does a speech. I think it is a better idea than trying to clap cold hands. It is certainly different though.

The view as I walk from school to the bus stop. I always think that it is just so beautiful around here. The camera never does it justice.

I am taking all these photos from my iphone, so the quality is pretty crappy. I also always seem to get a smudge on the photos, but that is just grubby me.

At the JET mid year conference. Hmmmm…. This was better than the orientation in Tokyo for sure, but still…. The best things I got out of it were a couple of ideas for games (reverse bingo anyone?). There was also information about the teaching English program in Finland and how they can totally speak English by the end of their high school years, but of course everything that was addressed will not be implemented in Japan. They could do it – after all I’m pretty sure if they started the Middle school textbooks in grade 3 here they would be able to do it easily. Thinking that perhaps they would move a bit slower than what they do in middle school, I see no reason why a grade six student could not graduate primary school with the English knowledge of what a current grade 9er (grade 3 in middle school) would have. However it is Japan’s policy that we just play games with primary school kids so it’s not going to happen…

That’s my thoughts/rant for now!

We were the bad kids up the back…

My first time bowling in Japan. Their shoes aren’t clown shoes! I wanted to keep them.

Before bowling we had all you can eat pizza which was pretty good. I also won bowling which is an unexplained phenomenon and I hope I didn’t break the universe.

I still can’t believe people eat the whole fish, head, tail, bones, all. I can’t fathom it. The thought makes me want to throw up.

The bus on the way to work.

From the top of the hill, walking to the bus stop from my middle school

My mountain school. This is all the kids in the school.

They has a skipping expert come in from another city to teach skipping skills. It was actually a lot of fun and I think I want to get a skipping rope when the weather warms up a little bit. I remember when I was a child I used to be able to skip for hours.

Rice fields everywhere were getting… um… machined over. This one is my back yard.

Tis amazing! There are actually people on my bus today!

View from the bus

Dinner. Home made wong tong soup – perfect for a cold night.

Everywhere was covered in cloud. This is me waiting for the bus…

More cloud.

But when I got to the top of the mountain where my school was I realised I had actually stepped out of the cloud. That was pretty cool.

Middle schoolers serving lunch. At my schools everyone eats in one room.

More fish. But the vegetable thing to the right side has grown on my and I enjoy it now. At middle school you can choose how much you eat which is fantastic. I always had trouble getting through all this food. Now I am trying to be more healthy in my everyday life I’m trying not to eat more than half of the rice. I try not to be guilty about throwing out all the food I don’t eat. I am thinking that if I don’t see the results I want by the start of the new school year in April I’m going to try and cancel school lunches and bring in my own. The downside would be losing valuable interaction time with the students.

After lunch you have to separate all the rubbish. You also wash your milk carton and unfold it.

This is still the cloud day… After school the cloud had cleared at everything looked amazingly clear. You can’t see it through the camera as well, but it was awesome. This is my middle school.

Friday! This is at an elementary school. I was always a fussy eater, but as I got older I became less and less fussy and now I eat quite a lot. Unfortunately, being back in Japan I feel like a fussy eater. I don’t like seafood and I don’t like citrus fruits. These two things are often served. I managed to get rid of the orange that was served with this meal, but had to eat the tuna croquette. *sigh*.

So at this school I always had a fax machine in the corner of my desk. Now I have a fax machine in the middle of my desk and a computer on the corner of my desk. Yeah, thanks guys. I have lots of room to work on. And I can’t even feel comfortable using the computer because I sit next to the vice principal.

View of the primary school as I wait for the bus. Yayayay, it’s Friday and now weekend time!

Well, that was my week or so, let me know what you think! Do you want me to post more stuff like this?

At the end of 2009, fast food chain Wendy’s closed all it’s stores in Japan. So, before it closed I wanted to get some Wendy’s into me. In Australia Wendy’s is a different company that sells ice-cream. I may have had Wendy’s the fast food when I was in America but I don’t remember, so for me this was the first time having the food.

So the day after Christmas I went to Osaka to try Wendy’s. That’s a bit misleading, I went to Osaka for other reasons but decided to try Wendy’s while I had the opportunity to.

I don’t think Wendy’s will be missed. It was just another burger. It made me crave a good real take-away shop burger from Australia. This was just a bit of meat between two pieces of cardboard. This is in contrast to the KFC I had on Christmas that was pretty decent as far as fast food food goes.

If you love Wendy’s and are in Japan, too bad. I think they have all closed now!

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I go to five schools, but from Monday onwards only four. At the school I’m leaving on Monday, it’s a sizable school of about 500 children. At this school I go to individual classrooms and eat lunch with only a class. It is my understanding that this is the usual in Japan, that students eat in their own classrooms.

The rest of my schools have 38 – 110 kids. It’s a bit unique in Japan, but at these schools we all eat in one room. I sort of end up at the same table all the time which is nice I guess.

I pay $2.40 for lunch at my primary schools and $2.80 for lunch at my middle school. Usually the money is collected monthly which i put in a nice little envelope. So it is cheap and good value for money – after all one of my complaints about it is that it is too much food!

The Proceedure

Some students put on aprons and masks to serve food. The actual serving changes per school and class – some the children line up with plates and go through conveyor belt style, others the servers serve up everything to the table and then the students arrive to their spot with the food already there.

The Food

I don’t get the food at all. I mean, I guess I just assumed that these would be balanced, healthy meals. They aren’t.

The base of the meal is either a bread roll or a large bowl of rice. And there is always milk. From there… it could be anything. I thought perhaps it would be meat, veges and fruit, but it could be anything… My main concern, however, is the amount of seafood. My predecessor told me that seafood is rare. I knew I shouldn’t have taken her word, as seafood is maybe every second day. I don’t like seafood at all, and because of this I look to lunch with dread…

This here is actually a good day. The shreaded cabbage is a taste I’m a bit over, and I don’t get how this carb overload is balanced, but pasta is a win for me. At the start I had trouble eating so much rice.

Another thing for me to complain about! I have never really been a fan of soups. I find them really bland. Lucky for me, soup is often a common feature in school lunches ;( However, the plus side is you can dip your bread into them. The bread is so dry that I find it really hard to eat by itself (I’m the kind of person who likes butter on my bread) but it is a bit more bearable after being dipped in the soup. On the plus side, even though there is a lot of rice with meals, I do find it to be really nice rice.

Lunch is either eaten with either a fork or chopsticks. It is always interesting to see if people eat things by picking them up whole or trying to break them apart with the utensil provided. There is never a spoon so soup is to be had by picking up the bowl. I can’t help feeling a bit rude every time I do this.

Note the shredded cabbage again. Yay!

The stuff to the top left is mochi – pounded rice, which I find waaaaaay too sweet. The middle stuff, I’m not sure what it is besides seaweed, but with this stuff I’ve gotten to the point where if I have more than a mouth full I want to throw it back up. It’s gross!! The stuff to the right are local grown vegetables. They are potato and carrot and daikon, and are actually really nice but they put on/cook them in some kind of sauce which I am not a big fan of. So it makes it a bit of a challenge to eat. There is something missing from this dish too:

Now, deep fried fish I’ll try. Grilled fish too, you know. It’s gross, but I might be able to bear it. With this, I’m not touching it with a ten foot pole… It’s some kind of fish with babies inside. And you eat the head and tail. Um… no thanks. I think only non seafood eaters can truely understand the horror of this.

An article about how schools use local grown ingredients in school lunches.

Another popular serving is the salad doused in mayonnaise. Which can either be a welcome change to a bland salad or sweetness overkill. This lunch is another one of those good lunches! Yay!

The Rest…

Before lunch everyone always says “Itadakimasu!” and after everyone says together “Gochisosamadeshita”. After you have finished eating you separate all the rubbish. Milk cartons are always washed and then flattered out. And then finally I can breath a sigh of relief… It’s over and I wont have to face that enormous, seafoody event for another 24 hours. Yay!

Yeah, I know. Not liking seafood… I moved to the wrong country.

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This month’s Japan Blog Matsuri is:

FOREIGN FOOD

Yep, it’s as simple as that! I want to talk about trying new things! I’ve always been a bit of a fussy eater, but I prefer to think of it as I know what I like. Still, my food choices have changed over the years and I like to live with no regrets, so when I went to Japan this past November I was determined to eat takoyaki.

For those not in the know, Takoyaki – たこ焼き – is octopus fried in batter, or as I like to interpret it, octopus balls. You can read more at wikipedia. It is served at a lot of street vendors around Osaka, and in other places I’m sure but that is where I saw the majority.

The thing is… I don’t like seafood. I do, however, like calamari and fish if it is deep fried and battered, such as in the meal of fish and chips. And, I wanted to experience something of Japanese culture that I couldn’t really back home. So, I was determined to have some takoyaki.

…. I did not like it.

In other food related news, everyone who comes to Australia must eat vegemite. mmmmm. Love that stuff. How do you like your vegemite?

This months Matsuri is being hosted by Deas @ Rocking In Hakata! Thanks Deas!