A Week of 給食 (School Lunch) - Day 1

In Japanese elementary and jr. high schools all students and teachers eat school lunch (kyushoku) every day. I am SO fortunate to have the best school dietitian EVER at my jr. high, so I get really great lunches!! (most days. ;) i mean, i am a seafood hater living in Japan, so there are bound to be some lunches i'd prefer not to have...but most of the time i really like what Maekawa San (前川さん) and the rest of the kitchen staff make.) I get to try so many different foods that aren't served in restaurants or that I wouldn't know to order, even if they were. A lot of our lunches are "home cooking" style Japanese food, rather than just the very traditional foods that most restaurants have. Before coming to Japan and being served the wonder that is kyushoku, I wouldn't have imagined most of these foods when thinking about "Japanese food". So, I guess other Americans wouldn't think of these as "Japanese food" either. That's why I decided that I'd post a picture of school lunch every day this week. I hope you enjoy seeing the variety. In addition to Japanese food, we also have Korean, Chinese, Indian, Italian, and Western (??).

I have been thinking about doing this for a couple weeks but kept forgetting, so I was really excited to check the lunch menu this morning to find out what today's lunch was! I could NOT believe what I saw...ししゃも (shishamo) and わかめご飯 (wakame gohan). Ogh...sick!!! These are the two foods I dislike more than anything else! UNbelievable! What a way to start this week of blogging school lunch. Well, you get what you get.


So, here it is...いただきます:

Shishamo [also known as "the most disgusting food in the world"]-- long, slender fish, which are eaten whole-- including the head. Although it's strange to just bite off the head of a fish, eyes and all, and eat it, that's not at all the worst part of shishamo. Other than the head and the little, crispy tail, the rest of the fish is full of tiny white eggs. Just thinking of the inside of a shishamo makes me feel sick. I wanted to take a picture of the inside of the fish so you could see it, but that would have required me biting the fish open. I was not about to do that! I gave them both away to Nakazatomi Sensei, and I thought it might be rude to ask him if I could take a picture after he'd taken a bite. So...check out this link. Really though, shishamo is even worse than the picture makes it look.

Wakame gohan-- rice with wakame seaweed and tiny, clear fish (including heads and eyes) mixed in.

Soup with tofu, spinach, celery, wakame, and carrots.

Cabbage and sprout salad with almond dressing (love this dressing!)

A mikan orange-- which I think is the same as a Clementine. ??

And milk, which we have every day.

I didn't eat much of this meal, so I'm pretty hungry now...time for dinner! Curry. yumm! Check back tomorrow for what will most definitely be a better lunch.