Japanese School Lunch

Hi everyone! It's a little bit random, but let's get hungry today and talk about school lunches.

School lunch is a pretty big deal in Japan. Apparently, becoming a "food specialist" in the education system is a prestigious position with a lot of competition. School lunches must constrain to a rigorous set of requirements, and every meal is listed for nutritional value and calorie content. Menus are announced every day over the intercom during lunch, which seems redundant because they are usually already eating by the time the intercom turns on.

Like school lunches in America (at least until the end of elementary school), school lunches contain a good balance of starches, protein, vegetables, and sometimes fruits. They are a little heavy on the starch side, which you can witness with the size of the bread or bowl of rice they serve. I wish there were fruits more often, but they are rare.

Unlike America, school lunches are served by the students. Before lunchtime everyday, the students don their food handling wear, complete with white gown, clear plastic gloves, and white hair cap. I like to call it "scrubbing up". The 5-8 kids in charge of serving food for the day then scoop food into bowls or onto plates and hand them to the other students, who queue with trays buffet-style. Understand that even the elementary schoolers serve their own lunches.

Also unlike America, the school lunches are BIG. Here at my middle school, I get pretty full every day. The menu shows that lunches are 700-1000 calories depending on the day, and since the teachers serve themselves, I think I tend to get more than I am supposed to. Despite serving up crap-tons of food, we don't have much time to eat it. Fourth period ends at 12:25, signaling the start of lunch, but I usually sit down with my lunch around 12:35. By the time the clock hits 13:00, everyone is expected to have finished eating AND cleaning up the lunch serving area. On one of my first few days here, I sat down and began reading an interesting article about Mother Teresa while slowly munching away at my food. After a while, I checked my watch, and it read just before 13:00. I turned and saw a group of about 10 teachers standing next to the food serving area and staring at me, waiting to clean up. I leaped out of my chair and put my dishes away among the teachers while they muttered condescendingly at me in Japanese I didn't understand. That's not going to happen again.

It's even worse for the students, because while I can go to the teachers room and serve myself a hot tray of food immediately, the kids need to set up, grab the food from the food room, and serve to all the kids in class before anyone can even take a bite. By the time everyone says "itadakimasu" and the feasting begins, it's usually already 12:45. Basically, lunch time is only about 10 minutes! I'm a big eater, but these kids can pack away food so much faster than I can, even if they cant eat more.

Living and working in Japan means learning to scarf down food as fast as you can, even when it's not in school. The lunch breaks are short, there's always a lot of food, and restaurants don't provide take out boxes. In this country, the CUSTOMER provides the take out boxes, not the restaurant. You can buy a stack of disposable plastic take-out style box at the 100-yen shop, but you might as well just buy a reusable plastic container instead. And who wants to lug around a container every time they go to a restaurant?

Anyways, that's what lunchtime is like here in Japan. See you next time!