School lunches are delivered to the school each day. I get my lunch in the teachers' lunch room, and take it to wherever I'm eating that week. I eat in a different classroom each week.
The trays, food, chopsticks or sporks, boxes of rice and bowls are brought to each classroom. Some students are assigned the task of dishing up the lunches for the other students. (I think this assignment changes weekly). The students then bring their lunches to their desks, which are grouped according to the plan for that day. It might be by gender, row, blood type, or some other method.
Everyone in Japan knows his or her blood type. Different blood types are supposed to have different personality characteristics. I'm a type O, which is supposed to be agreeable, sociable and optimistic, but vain and careless. You decide if this has any merit.
Anyway, here are pictures of several different school lunches.
Hamburg steak, spinach salad, soup, rice, milk and custard. The rice comes in the red box, and is hot. The paper spoon on the rice box is for the custard.
Today's rice has furikake in it.
Remember wrestling opening cheap milk cartons? These have a hole to poke with your straw.We have fried squid on a stick and a salad; chicken, carrot and potato stew, rice and milk.
Another stew, salad, bread with butter and sugar, milk and yogurt. Note the metal spork, and another paper spoon.
Saba (makeral) and seaweed salad with chikuwa (fish paste), pork and veggie soup, rice and milk. the little packet is furikake, which is spinkled on the rice.
More fish, spinach and beansprout salad; a dish of chikuwa (the round things with a hole in the middle), konnyaku (the grey things) carrots andwieners; rice and milk. I love the wieners, like the chikuwa and can't get past the color of the konnyaku. Konnyaku is basically flavorless, so it can't be called bad-tasting -- I just don't think food should be a grey gel with black flecks in it. The fish is great.
Here is a close up of the fish.
And the other stuff. It isn't a soup, and not really a stew either.
Stew with noodles; breaded and deep-fried quail eggs on a stick, tuna and spinach salad; milk, and a custard tart.
Salad and dressing; curry; rice; milk and frozen lemon jelly. I never cared for curry before -- it was too spicy. But I love Japanese curry -- it's a sweet curry. Compared to Chinese cuisine, Japanese food is sweeter in general. The jelly is like jello, only it's made with kantan, also known as agar-agar. That's a seaweed product. If you remember that gelatin comes from hooves, a jelly made from seaweed doesn't sound that bad, does it? Plus, it doesn't melt at room tempurature. It's actually quite good semi-frozen.Overall, school lunches have been quite good. They range from 750 to 950 calories each, so many days, I don't need to eat a lot for dinner. They try to get a good mix of things in each meal, which is why you don't see a single vegetable served by itself. I pay Y5100 each month for lunches, so that's a good deal.
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3 comments:
You have found a good way to try Japanese cuisine, something new and different every day. Is there a pattern, such as squid Mondays, stew Tuesdays? Also, tell us about etiquette when eating---is it rude to pass on dishes you don't care to try, does everyone chat or eat in silence, are second servings offered?. Does it in anyway resemble the American lunchroom as you remember?
So... um... what *is* konnyaku, other than grey? Animal, vegetable or mineral?
Konnyaku is made from the konjak or "devil's tongue" plant's corm (root). The flour made from the corm is mixed with water and limewater to make a Jello-like substance. It doesn't melt in your mouth like Jello. It's also used in candy and jelly (Jello), so I've probably eaten it but the stuff I get at school isn't sweet and it doesn't come in pretty colors.
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