It has now been two weeks since the festival. I took quite a few pictures of the proceedings. However, as I was about to post them here the following day, a friend informed me that it is in fact illegal to put any pictures containing students online and pictures of teachers can only be posted with their express consent. So, I'll just have to make do with a typed account.
As I may have mentioned, I had Tuesday the second of November off to make up for having to attend on the sixth. School started at the normal time (8:15) and the students went to homeroom and the first three periods on Tuesday's schedule. Then there was some more time in homeroom followed by lunch. Below is a picture of what the teachers had for lunch. The miso soup was good, but the sushi and soba were not as good as the lunches here tend to be.
After lunch, students went to the rooms they had decided to spend the next three hours in. There were 22 rooms, each with a different subject. Most were led by someone from the community. In each room, the students and some of their parents worked on projects. The subjects ranged from traditional things like tea ceremony and stone stamp carving to things like making waffles or doing yoga. The science room really stole the show at the end of the day. They spent their time making water rockets (which they made out of two liter bottles and launched using bicycle pumps) which they were launching for the last hour or so across the sports field behind the school. Some of them could clear the entire field while others made it about ten feet before slamming into the ground. It was fun to watch. I spent the day moving from room to room to see what each group was working on. I was allowed to try serving tea in the 茶道 (sado-tea ceremony) room. That was an interesting experience, as the woman explained what I should be doing in very fast and polite Japanese, both of which made it difficult to understand what she was telling me to do. I managed to not scald anyone though, so that's a plus.So that was the 6th. I then had Sunday off, as per usual, and then launched into another full week. Below are the meals I managed to photograph. It turned out to be difficult to do as I was attempting to do so without being seen weirdly taking pictures of my food. I've started eating with the students, which as given me the opportunity to be alone while in transit so I can take pictures, so my apologies if they're not too clear.
This was last Tuesday's lunch. Monday I ate in the staffroom (where I always have to get my tray of food) so I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it. This was a pretty standard meal. We always get milk and we usually get rice in a tin box. We also always get a bowl of vegetable products and another bowl of something, usually soup. It seems Tuesday was Miso. Also, Tuesday I was lucky enough to get the little cup in the bottom right. It's one of Mito's famous products: natto. Natto is fermented soybeans that tastes worse than it smells, which really says something. So far, it's the only thing I've been served that I couldn't finish.
Wednesday must have been the day that there were people in the hall everywhere between the staffroom and the classroom I ate in, because the picture above is of Thursday's meal. Again, we had milk, vegetables, and a soup broth. However, Thursday we had noodles instead of rice. The noodles were put directly from their packet into the broth, though only about half of them would fit in the bowl at one time. I remember this being pretty tasty.
Friday's lunch was an apple, another vegetable medley, milk and gyudon. Gyudon is a dish made up of thin strips of meat, onion, and other goodies on top of a bowl of rice. There are a lot of gyudon chains in Japan, and they're all pretty cheap. I think one chain, Yoshinoya, has even made it to America. I think they have one in Times Square, so next time you're in New York you might consider trying it.
Sadly, someone started to come around the corner as I was taking this, so it came out blurry. Sorry about that. Regardless, Monday's lunch was a bit odd. We were served a sort of bean chili, which I was surprised to see, along with our vegetables and milk. We had bread instead of rice (making it the third time I've had a meal without rice at the school, both of the others are also pictured in this post). The bread was kind of strange. It was a weird mix of sugary and salty which I don't know I've ever encountered with bread. Anyway, the chili was unexpected, but it was ok.
Finally, today's meal. We were fed a thick soup of some kind along with the vegetable bowl, today smother in dressing. As I'm not the biggest salad dressing fan, I could have done without. However, Japanese dressing seems to be lighter than American dressing, so I didn't have any problem with it. As I mentioned before, we're encouraged to eat everything on our trays to set a good example for the kids, though that can be difficult to do when they're talking to you and you're trying to figure out what they want to say and tell them how best to say it. So far, I've only had to be told by the homeroom teacher (teachers always eat with their homerooms) that time was up and I needed to be finished.
All in all, I think the lunches are pretty tasty. In any event, the food here is miles beyond what I used to get at my middle school. Also, they're not at all what I expected. I'm not sure what I was expecting out of Japanese public school lunch, but chili never crossed my mind.
Well, I think that's all for this post. I wrote more for the blog on paper at school today, but I think I'll save it for later in the week as this post has already dragged on for a while. I hope you enjoyed the food pictures. I think it's a pretty representative sample of what I've had there so far. Sometime I'll take get a few pictures of the inside of the sushi restaurant near me. But, I think that's all for now. More coming soon, I promise.
good work!
ReplyDeletenoodles improve any blog.