 letters from japan by michelle School Lunch, or, Why I Carry Candy and Gum in My Handbag Today was the first day I actually felt nauseous looking at my lunch. So although I have avoided the topic for a long time, I feel I now must finally broach the subject of Kyushoku (school lunch). Kyushoku can be your friend or your enemy. Sometimes, I get to lunch and find curried rice, with some sort of assortment of vegetables. Sometimes, it's tuna salad and bread with miso soup on the side. Recently though, I have left lunch with my stomach growling. Last week, a pile of small bits, dark brown and light brown, showed up on my plate. It resembled cat food, in smell and likeness. The light brown bits I discovered, to my relief, were chopstick-sized fried chicken. The dark brown bits, unfortunately, were liver. I haven't eaten liver in probably 15 years, and one would think, that perhaps after that long, one might forget the taste. But it seems that liver is one of those unmistakable flavors. You can never really forget it. No matter how hard you try. Since there are no choices of what to eat in Junior High School, it is expected that you eat what you get. Especially if you are a teacher. You have to set a good example for the students. Thank God for the mints in my bag. Being in an Asian country, there are far more unfamiliar things that can appear on your plate. Or in your soup. A benign-looking soup turned up last month, with bits of carrots, potatoes, lotus root, and other vegetables. Upon first look, lotus root looks a little frightening, a potato with bullet holes, but it doesn't have much of a taste, so iit's not too bad. This soup also had squares of something called Devil's Root, which looks like gray jello with black pepper sprinkled in it. Although it is also quite tasteless, I don't care for the texture too much, so I usually avoid it. The soup and I were getting along swimmingly, when I came across a round, white object about the size of a quarter. For some reason, I figured this to be tofu, but, of course, I was wrong. It was an egg. A small egg. A quail egg, I was informed. It wasn't horrible, just a bit disconcerting. I didn't expect it, and I suppose that's part of the shock of Kyu-SHOK-u. A surprise could be hidden anywhere, waiting for you to find it. It likes to see the look on your face when you realize what it is. I hear other JET's complain about Kyushoku, but never thought it was that bad, barring the liver incident. But today, after a fire drill, I got the stomach-churning experience I'd heard so much about. And it wasn't hiding, waiting for me to find it, no. It was staring me in the face. Yessirree, today was the winner. There are no lunchrooms in Junior High School in Japan. The kids eat in the classrooms. Six or so students wear little aprons and chef's hats, and serve the other kids lunch onto aluminum, M*A*S*H trays. The next day, the shift rotates, and another six kids will do it. I eat lunch in the library with the other teachers, but it's the same system. We bring in lunch from the trucks, and make plates of food before the teachers come in. I usually get there a little early, to help serve lunch, and also for the expressed purpose of checking out what's on the menu, so it won't be so much of a surprise later in the company of the other teachers. But I was late coming in from the fire drill today, and when I got to my seat in the library, a plate was already waiting for me: A heap of rice (great!), a mystery soup with dark masses in a viscous yellow liquid (hmm), and dull green-gray pile of some leafy vegetable, beef and squid (umm), and the crème de la crème, two fish, as long as my outstretched hand, gray-brown, decayed-looking, skins, fins, tails and all (oh. my. god.). The jaws of both fish had come loose, and I could see my shiny aluminum plate through them. They were belly-up, reinforcing that these were indeed living animals that were now dead. Maybe it's just an American thing, I don't know, but we like to keep things very separate. We generally don't want to see a whole chicken lying on the dinner table, beak to feet. Even the language we use tends to be separate. Cow isn't cow on your plate, it's beef. But here in Japan, they are all too aware. It's very unnerving. Although my stomach was tied in knots just looking at these things, I had made a pact to myself that I would try just about everything when I got to Japan. I have had jellyfish and raw horse. I have tried raw fish and had no idea what it was (maybe it's best that way sometimes). But this, this was a lot to ask. I pried one of the fish in half, and held it up to my face with my chopsticks, looking into the brown, crumbling head. Little feathery bones jutted out from everywhere, and the smell resembled the Jersey shore on a low-tide day. The rest of the teachers at my table steadily watched me, while crunching away happily on their own meals. I looked around at other plates. They had consumed these little monsters with no problem. Heads and all. The pressure was definitely on. I turned back to the fish between my chopsticks. Its eyes stared up at me, hollow, sunken, nauseating. I couldn't do it. I caved. I put the fish, or half fish, down with its twin, and ate the rest of my lunch. Or some of it. Okay, I only ate the rice and some of the mystery soup. But I did try the beef/squid salad. Doesn't that count for something? I was still hungry when I got back to the teacher‚s room. Thank God for that strawberry gum in my bag. |
Mysteries of Japan Part Two: Climate Control (The Absence of) Mysteries of Japan Part One: Obaachans Godzilla Was a Misunderstood Foreigner School Lunch, or, Why I Carry Candy and Gum in My Handbag What's in a name? The Shochu Monster Airmail! Intro Find out more about the JET Programme
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