First Japanese Junior High School Lunch

Unlike most ALTs in Japan who work at Junior High Schools I don’t get school lunch. I work at a combined Junior/Senior High School (or Secondary School) so while the Junior  High students (and their teachers) do get a set school lunch we also have a cafeteria for the Senior High students and the other teachers. I did have the choice whether or not to get the JHS lunch and it is very cheap but with the set lunch it’s either get it every day or not at all. Since it sometimes has food I really don’t like (i.e. natto) I’d rather either eat at the cafeteria or bring my own lunch.

However this past Thursday one of our first year classes was closed down due to flu. I think around 9 or 10 of the 34 kids currently have the flu so the rest of the students were sent home for the rest of the week to hopefully stop it spreading to the other students. However this meant that on Friday there would be 34 extra lunches going to waste unless the teachers stepped up. This lead to about ten of us having the Junior High lunch on Friday. The other teachers found it very funny that we kept on being surprised by the littlest things: ‘Oh, the rice tin has the city symbol on it!!’, ‘You have to fold your milk carton?!’. I think it did lead to a bit of a decrease in productivity because there was only 10 of us consuming the lunch for 34 kids so we did get given quite a lot to eat!

Here it is! We had Mabo Tofu (bottom right bowl), milk, edamame (young soybean) croquettes, boiled veggies and rice (which also came with a little packed of dried seaweed for seasoning that I discovered after this picture).

There were extra helpings of everything in this picture but I seriously couldn’t eat any more! Also I think I must have the cutest chopsticks ever (Winnie the Pooh!).

WIAW – Tuesday edition!

Time for a new type of post for me: What I Ate Wednesday.

Be sure to check out some of the other posts on WIAW.

Living in Japan means I get some questions from home about the kind of things I eat so I thought this would be a good idea. The standard  post is for Wednesdays but since Wednesday is the one day of the week I don’t eat lunch at work (grabbing a sandwich going from school to another) I thought doing a Tuesday version would be better. So here you have it:

Breakfast: Oatmeal and orange juice - not so Japanese! I actually have to buy the oatmeal from a Foreign Food shop. It's nice to have something warm when it's so cold and snowy outside like it is now.

Lunch: Today I bought lunch at the school cafeteria. This is miso ramen so ramen noodles and lots of vegetables in a miso broth. Yum!

Dinner: Very tired after the gym today so I just grabbed some sushi from the supermarket on my way home. On the right is Inarizushi which is a pouch of fried tofu filled with rice. The other two are sushi rolls. To be honest I'm not too sure about the ones in the middle..I think they are pickled burdock. The ones on the left tuna, lettuce, egg and crab.

No pictures of: water and banana/apple snacks since they are boring (and I forgot!).

What I ate: Japanese High School Graduation Edition

Some people were interested in the food we eat at special school events….so this is for you.

Lunch - Bento arranged by the school

Bento contents - one of the nicest ones i have had. No pregnant fish, no natto...great! The pink beans on the rice are sweet azuki beans so the rice was a bit sweet. On the bottom right are veggies (carrot, mushroom, peas etc), top right is some mini croquets, salmon, a pink sweet bean dessert wrapped in a leaf and some meat roll thing. In the middle is pickled vegetables. Top left is potato salad, prawn, meat wrapped around mushrooms and a fried tofu/meat triangle thing.

So that was lunch provided by the school. There was also cold green tea but I declined. After school we also had a staff party. Usually these are held at restaurants but since my school is so big for anything larger than department events we tend to have them in banquet halls of hotels. This time was actually in a venue for wedding receptions! There were many courses:

First dish: parma ham and salad

Second dish: Sushi (also spot the obligatory beer that comes with these events)

Third dish: Chicken

Fourth dish: soup. I think this was a kind of seafood chowder.

Fifth dish: Not really sure what this was...almost like oden but close to no broth

Sixth dish: Gyoza

Seventh dish: miso soup in the black cup, the other dish has rice, prawn, fish eggs and something pink and sweet...

Eight dish: Dessert. As usual it was super disappointing. These places are so fancy and they never have anything remotely good for dessert. Here we got two strawberries and a slice of grapefruit. Boring.

So there you have it! The food involved in my Japanese High School Graduation!

Project 365 – Day 364 (almost there!!)

It may look disgusting but it tastes great! I'm home sick today (why do I only get ill on the weekends?!). My lovely friend Emma delivered some ice cream for my sore throat and I decided to burn the illness out with Japanese curry! Let's hope it works!

Project 365 – Day 344

Slow day at the 365 photo blog? Photograph the inside of your fridge!

Project 365 – Day 333

Haagen-Dazs post 536784: melty caramel. Pretty similar to the UK's Dulce de Leche

Project 365 – Day 317

Back to our favourite burger place 'Kame House' for Sarah's Birthday

She's not getting older, she's evolving

Project 365 – Day 313

Melon Pan. This is a sweet roll covered in a cookie crust. No melon involved!

Project 365 – Day 312

Adventures with Haagen Daaz part 5 million: Crepe Ice cream. Strange Japan. Strange.

Project 365 – Day 305

Chicken Tikka Masala...oh how I've missed you!

Indian food tonight and it was so good! We do have some Indian restaurants in Sendai but they only fall into the categories of ‘bad’ and ‘good for Japan i.e. not great’. This Indian in Sapporo was actually properly good! YUM!