[jasonbvr]

Kyushoku is school lunch. It is funny how even now, a lot of what I remember about school in the US has to do with the food I ate there. So let's talk rice and bread for a bit.

I say rice and bread because basically these two together make up, in my opinion, the foundation of the Japanese diet. Your school lunch will either be known as a bread or rice day. I ask the kids all the time, what is for lunch today? The only thing most will remember is whether it is bread or rice today. Different types of bread, they are always some form of white bread (usually the bun type of stuff). You have plain white bread in variations such as with raisins, apples, cheese, or chocolate chips mixed into it. Then you have the flavored white breads like melon and chocolate. Then there is the infamous age-pan which is a white bread fried and then dusted with, I think, some sort of sweet potato flavoring. Age-pan is really good when you get accustomed to it, but the freaking flavor powder gets every. Different types of rice will be the plain, short grained rice you get everywhere. Sometimes you get the furikake to sprinkle on it which comes in different flavors (usually a salty fish like taste). Other times there will be the different types of seaweed mixed in or you get the seaweed paper to make mini onigiris.

The lunch at chugakkou is supposed to be 900 calories each day, and a lot of those calories come from the carbs like the bread and rice. Other carb heavy food served will be the spaghetti, udon, soba, and yaki-soba dishes. Then there is always some form of meat or egg for protien. I've never seen a boiled egg coated with meat and then fried until I ate kyushoku. There are also a lot of eggs in the soup or you might get a pickled boiled egg on some days. Fish, of course, is quite prevalent as well. Whether it is fried or baked. Usually you get the cheap kind of fish like saba, but every now then you get a chunk of salmon. Pork is by far the most common meat in kushoku. You will get fried pork sandwiches, bacon in the vegetable soup, pork in the curry, little hot dog slices in the salad. Honestly with all the pork and eggs I see, I don't see how any Japanese student lives past 20.

The soup, bring on the mushrooms. I had never eaten so many different types of mushrooms before living in Japan. But anyways, there are three basic types of soup, vegetable (tomatoe base and non-tomatoe), miso in all its forms, and the chowders (think New England clam chowder without the clams). The chowders I can't really eat because once they made me sick so now I fear them. Basically they are corn or potato base.

Lastly we have the salad or fruit section. I am not too fond of goma (sesame seed) dressing, so a lot of times I don't like the salads. Vinegar based, no trouble. A lot of times the salad is this pathetic mush of green stuff. Sometimes you get some broccoli, but if you slather that junk in mayo I won't touch it. Fruit is what I look forward to. Sometimes we get awesome little fruit bowls. Being that school lunch is fairly cheap, the quality of fruits and veggies (most expensive food in Japan, my opinion) is not really that great.

A few other little details about lunch. Like I said before about the autonomy of the students, the students prep and serve their own lunches. I am not talking about cooking because most school lunches are trucked in from a factory everyday. They take turns having to dish out the food to the other students. Unlike in the morning, the teacher for that class eats with the students which is more for the bonding than keeping an eye on them. The biggest downside to food in the school, you are not allowed to opt out. Bringing your own food is a dame (no, no). Hooray for Japanese conformity, if you don't like the food or worse are a vegetarian I guess you're screwed.

Japanese like to brag a lot about the healthiness of their food, but there are some major faults. Zero fiber, white breads, pastas and white rice are what I have come to think of as "white death." It is really hard to maintain a healthy carb, fat and protein ratio with this stuff. Then there is the grease. I am not sure what kind of oil they use, but there is loads of grease in a lot of the food at school. Pork and eggs, both are loaded with cholesterol. And even though I mentioned salad, there is a severe lacking of fruits and vegetables. Forget beans unless it is a soy bean. I go to Brazillian stores and import shops to specifically for beans.

ps~You ever tried eating corn with f'ing chopsticks?