給食 School Lunch - Chopsticks and Mystery Meat

Something that I was actually really looking forward to in Japan was the school lunch. For just $45 a month, you can have school lunch everyday. All the students in elementary school and middle school are required to eat school lunch. Once you enter high school or if you have a very particular allergy, you bring a lunch from home, but before that, teachers and students all eat the same thing. It is actually a very important system. Here are some pictures of my school lunches. The ones with green backgrounds and pink trays were at my fastest school and the ones with gray backgrounds and green trays were at my smallest school.

Starting in elementary school, Japanese students are expected to take a larger part of the school day responsibilities. This works well on several levels. On the first, it reminds the students that they aren't babies anymore. They aren't at day care anymore and need to start taking care of themselves, each others, and their own belongings. Students begin to take part in cleaning the school, announcing the transitions between classes, leading the summary speeches before and after school, and in paring out the school lunches for their classmates.

The food is all prepared on an off campus location and then distributed to the local schools in large containers with one set of containers for each grade and class. For example  the third years may be split into A and B class, so 3A and 3B each have their own containers. Why is that? Because there is no cafeteria; each class eats in their classroom. Everyday, a group of students is chosen to serve the lunch to everyone else. They gather the materials, set up a lunch line, and dish out the foods from the containers into plates as the other students file through and take the food onto their trays.

This teaches that to give out fair portions, how to be safe and clean around food (face masks, aprons, washing your hands, and keeping utensils sanitary), to wait your turn, and to be part of a team. The students then wait until everyone is seated before giving a chorus call of「いっただきます」or a sort of "We humbly receive this (food)." Only after all of that are any extra milks, pieces of bread, or seconds of anything else distributed. 

Who gets these extras? Whoever wants them raises their hands and the remainder is evenly divided amongst them. But in the case of milk or bread or something that is only available in one unit, they settle the matter in the most fair manner possible. Leave it up to fate: rock, paper, scissors. Winner takes the bounty. Easily solved.

The school lunches are well balanced, but contrary to stereotype, there is not always rice. if there is bread or another carbohydrate, the rice is not used. The school milk is sometimes also replaced by coffee milk, for which the students have a field day! They love coffee milk, or at least the idea of something new and different. To make their little days, I always give mine away and let another rock, paper, scissors winner have the prize. Sometimes there is even a dessert item; a cold jelly or mochi wrapped in leaves celebrates a special day or season.

With all of this delicious-ness, though, comes a cost. A cost that Shima-city doesn't think that we can afford any longer. Currently there are multiple school lunch centers that make and distribute the food to the schools. Depending on where I am teaching, I will be on a different meal schedule because the meal centers can make whatever they want whenever they want. The city has decided that instead of operating all of these small centers, a larger "central center" in Ugata would be better. That way every single student in the whole of Shima city will be eating the same thing.

What does this mean for me? I'm not entirely sure. It may mean that there will be less flavor, it may mean that the food is cold by the time lunch comes, it may mean that there is less variety, it may mean less fresh fruits and veggies, but we won't find out until September when all of the other centers will shut down. I do know that the current centers' part time workers will be let go and only the full time employees will be kept to work at the Ugata center. Besides that, it is only a shot in the dark.

Until then, I have all summer to enjoy the delicious school lunches and try to get the students to talk to me during that time. Usually I can get by with "Is this fish? What sport do you like?" and so on, but I'm torn between keeping up the conversation and eating up my lunch. Oh tasty food, why do you taunt me so?



p.s. If you can't tell what kind of meat it is, don't fret or worry - it is probably just tofu ;)