Eating Lunch with 1-3 class

Eating Lunch w: 1-3 class - 8
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.

Lunch at a Japanese Jr High usually occurs in the individual classes - altho I've heard about really small school, with less than 50 kids, where all the students eat together.

So at Taisha Chu, the lunch arrives via truck and is brought into a holding room, where students from each class go to get the various tubs and trays and food for that day's kyushoku (school lunch).

The kids take turns being the food fetchers and the food servers, and they have to wear these masks and aprons, but no gloves.

Everyone in the entire school, including the teachers, eat the same thing - and always milk, and only milk, to drink.

So I sometimes eat with the kids in their classroom instead of in the staff room. If I'm at an Elementary school, I always eat with the kids, but at Jr High they really don't care as much that I'm in there, since they only have about 15 minutes to eat after all the serving is completed. But class 1-3's homeroom teacher is also my JTE Moriyama sensei, so she askes me to join from time to time. I can chat a little with the kids in between bites, but mostly in Japanese since they don't really want to speak English when they're relaxing - that's too much like work.

Of course, since I don't eat fish and lots of other Japanese foods, somedays I eat very little off my tray, which kinda makes me feel bad, since the kids are taught to clean their trays - but I can usually get away with it by saying the magic English word they all know: "Diet."

click on this pic for more pics from this day.

Enjoy,
Jason

Next up is pics from my full day at Taisha Sho on July 4th, and then I hope to move up to more recent pics like the Taisha summer festival and then, eventually, yesterday's Sports Day, which was a blast!