Cultural Nuances: School Lunch

Schools are some of the best places to really study a country’s culture. After all, schools are where culture is taught to children. Yes, reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic are taught, too, but one of the most important jobs a school has is to pass along societal habits, norms and values to their students. Teaching in a Japanese school allows me a rare insight into these social details, and I thought I’d share some of the more interesting discoveries I have made. Today, we’ll look at school lunches.

Lunch is a big affair, with all of the students in the school gathering in the cafeteria. In American schools, lunch is usually split, with the younger students eating earlier and the older students eating later. Here, all the students eat together, and each has a special table for their age and class. Teachers eat with the students as well, about two teachers for every table. Lunch is carefully planned around nutritional standards and usually consists of rice (or two pieces of bread), meat (usually fish), soup, some sort of side dish (sometimes a noodle or mushroom salad), and always a carton of milk.

Each class has a few students helping to serve lunch, even the first graders. They have white jackets, facemasks, and hairnets that they wear as they serve lunch out to their classmates. For the first grade, the students walk to the serving area, make up a plate, and bring it back to give to another student. Then, other students walk up and make a plate and bring it back to give to someone else, so that each student is being served by another student. The second graders seem to make their own plates, so it may just be a tradition for the first graders.

The entire time this is happening, soothing, happy is music is being played (I distinctly heard ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’, so think music along those lines). Teachers walk around with the extra food and students raise their hands to indicate that they would like more of a certain dish and the teachers dole it out. Once everyone has their lunch, the music stops and another students stands at the head of the cafeteria and announces what the lunch is and leads the students in saying ‘itadakimasu’. Literally translated, this means ‘I humbly receive’, but it basically means ‘let’s eat’ or ‘bon appetite’. At this point, the students and teachers begin to eat, mostly in silence (though, given that these are kids we’re talking about, there is a fair amount of whispering). All in all, the lunches are tasty, though sometimes the way they look can be a little off putting (whole fish, baby fish, goopy soup, etc.). The children are diligent in cleaning their plates, and I haven’t seen a single student not finish their lunch. The students are also very neat while eating, pulling out their personal handkerchiefs or tissues to clean up any spills. The most adorable example of this was when one of the students (a first grader) dropped two pieces of rice between his tray and his neighbor’s tray. His neighbor looked at him, pointed to the rice, and the boy quickly picked it up and put it to the side on his tray.

Once about twenty minutes have passed the music begins to play again, signaling that lunch is almost over. About five minutes later another student comes up and announces anything that needs announcing before leading everyone in saying ‘gochisosamadeshita’ or, basically ‘it was a feast’.

The students then stand up and begin organizing the dishes, stacking the bowls and plates, putting all of the empty milk cartons and straws on a tray, the chopsticks on another, and each student takes a stack of dishes or a tray to the cleaning area to deposit. Then, they grab their toothbrushes from the shelf nearby and brush their teeth at the nearby trough sink.

Needless to say, there are a few differences between Japanese and American school lunches. I’d say the main difference is the idea that the students are members of the school, not participants in the school. They are expected to help with lunch, clean up after themselves, and generally respect the school the way they would respect their home. Lunch is very ordered and community minded. Everyone (even teachers) eats the same thing and children don’t have the option of bringing their own lunch. There is very little waste, children finishing their lunches even if they don’t particularly like the food that is being served that day. I love lunch times both because it’s a prime opportunity for people watching, but also because there is a real sense of community. The kids are also ridiculously cute, chattering away to me in Japanese as I nod and smile and try to get my points across with charades. 

So far, I'm enjoying the lunches, though I seem to have had better luck with food than some of the other JETs. I'll detail the rest of my adventures in school culture as I go, but this has been the most startling thus far.

The only foreigner

Sakegawa is a town of about 5000 people, spread over a fairly large area. It used to be five different hamlets before it was condensed into one village. In the entire incorporated township, I am the only American (and I’m fairly sure I’m the only foreigner, though there may be a Belgian man running about somewhere). It’s a strange sensation, like living in a fishbowl. No matter where I go or what I’m doing, I inevitably get stares. It isn’t meant to be rude, people are just curious, and it generally doesn’t bother me. Occasionally, when I’m having a rough, confusing day, the scrutiny can be a bit overwhelming, but I’ve found that a bright and pointed smile at the gawker usually solves the problem.

Having grown up in a fairly diverse part of California, I think it’s hard for me to imagine how truly alien I must look in a society that fully admits its own homogenous makeup. It makes me particularly worried about my behavior because I know that, given human nature, some people will generalize my actions to be true for everyone in my country. There was a particular moment during a festival where I had purchased several different festival foods out of a desire to try as much as possible. I was starving and just wanted to sit somewhere and eat, however I kept worrying that people would see me pull out several containers and assume that all foreigners ate that much on a regular basis, or that I eat that much on a regular basis. It took me a good hour and a half to finally talk myself into just sitting down and eating some food, to hell with what people thought. Even then I couldn’t quite relax.

There are perks to being the only foreigner in town, too. The amount of free food I’ve been given could feed a small family for a month. The strangest example of hospitality I have experienced was when a stranger stopped alongside me as I walked home and asked whether I liked pumpkins. After I admitted that yes, I did indeed like pumpkins, he demanded I get in his car and then drove me to his farm where he gave me four pumpkins before driving me home (without ever needing any directions, which was a little disconcerting).

Similar, though less extreme, situations happen pretty much every day. Desserts, dinner, sacks full of vegetables. Little, thoughtful gifts from people who want to welcome me to their town. It’s the double edged sword of living here. Intense hospitality and unending scrutiny. It’s a good trade off. Even if it means my refrigerator is full of rotting vegetables because I haven’t figured out how to eat them all before they go bad. Ah well.

Sakegawa

The train ride to my town was relatively short – only three and a half hours. Considering the distance is about from Northern California to Southern California, I was pleased it didn’t take longer. The scenery was breathtaking, and I may have been a little too camera happy, though I ended up taking only a few pictures, but a boat load of videos.

I was the last stop on the train, way up in little old Shinjo. It was strange to watch all of the friends I’d made in orientation depart one by one until, finally, I was the only one left. Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. The orientation advisor was with me and there a but load of other people on the train, too, they just weren’t JETs. I practiced my self introduction, much to the amusement of the little old Japanese woman a few seats up, who periodically stifled her laughter into her hand at my abysmal pronunciation and sentence structure. To give you some perspective on what I sounded like, let me give you  the bones of my introduction.

Nice to meet you! I am Alyssa. I am American. I come from California. First time Japan. I like baking. I like reading. Nice to meet you!

Yeah. The fact that I sounded like an overeager five year old didn’t stop me from being ridiculously, inordinately proud of myself for managing even that much. Finally, we pulled into Shinjo station. Now, the rest of the JETs had been picked up by their supervisors or other city officials holding signs with their names on them. Being picked up by someone holding a sign has been a long held dream of mine, so I was pretty excited to see my sign. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I think that given the fact I was the only JET being picked up at Shinjo station that a sign would have been a bit superfluous. Ah well, it is a dream for another time.

My supervisor, head boss, and predecessor picked me up from the station. I decided not to give my self introduction just then as standing on a platform, holding my luggage and telling everyone that I like to bake and read might have been just a wee bit awkward. I got the royal treatment as I was taken from the station. Nice city car, front seat, people carried my bags. Awesome. There was a fair bit of awkward silence in the car as I tried to form sentences in Japanese that didn’t begin with “I like”. Thankfully, my predecessor Brianna was there to help out and make things a little less ridiculously tense. We spoke in snippets and I did my best to keep up and understand, Brianna filling in the gaps in my comprehension. There was a brief tour, the best ways in and out of Shinjo being pointed out as we rolled into Sakegawa.

Our first stop was the town hall where my luggage had been shipped. The office is quite nice, and the area of the office where I work has six other people. Upon entering, I gave my little self introduction and was greeted warmly, albeit a bit nervously by my new coworkers. They’d made a ‘guide book’ of sorts, filled with names and faces of the people in the office. Considering how bad I am with names and faces, it was much appreciated (and really freaking adorable). After exchanging pleasantries (as translated by Brianna) we lugged my bags to the car.

Finally it was time to see my house. I’d built it up in my head to be this awesome, roomy dwelling that would be perfect for my time in Japan. It did not disappoint. The house is, first of all, a house and very roomy by Japanese standards. It has two rooms (the bedroom/living room and a guest room/office), a kitchen, a bathroom, a laundry/vanity area, and a toilet room. There’s also a fairly large garage underneath the house accessible by a fairly treacherous stairwell. Hardwood floors plus socks do not an ideal combination make. Oh, did I mention the flat screen HDTV that they bought for the house? No? Well, they bought a flat screen HDTV for the house, much to my and my PS3’s delight. Am I bragging? Hell yes. It is my blog, I can brag if I damn well please.

The view outside of my bedroom window

My house from the outside

At that point I was told to relax for an hour or so, change into something more comfortable and then Brianna and her husband Gabriel would take me out to dinner. The first thing I did once everyone had gone their way was to crank the air conditioning. After wearing a suit in the middle of the Japanese summer, hot and heavy with humidity, this was like pure bliss.

After lounging a bit, Brianna and Gabe came by and it was off to Shinjo for shopping and dinner. Grocery shopping was overwhelming, made less so by having someone with me who understood all of the labels and knew where to find the food I wanted. Dinner came next, and oh man, was that a treat. Sushi and yakiniku (which is basically meat grilled on a little firepit at the table. Delicious.

Sated and verging on a food coma, it was time for bed and my first night sleeping on a futon. Wasn’t that bad, besides wrestling with the irrational fear of bugs crawling over me in the middle of the night. All in all, my first day in Sakegawa was a success and the rest of the week followed pretty much in the same vein. 

And now, here's a bit of photovomit, all off the gorgeous town of Sakegawa, my current home.