Turning over a new leaf

The last school dinner of 2008. A good one. The leaf-shaped object is a kamoboku, it was pretty good. The main dish was chicken curry, chip shop style. Good stuff, especially with the slightly crunchy rice. The only thing that would drag this up to 5 stars would be some sort of pudding or replacing the milk. Tomorrow's lunch will be up in the clouds, courtesy of Air France.
I'll try and geotag it.
****•

Ikea lunch

Amazing, just amazing.

A late one

This is from yeterday. Good goba, goma, go-something salad. Mayonaise, chilli and bamboo are all good. Soup was weird. Like jelly and with an odd flavour. There were also shumai, but they are hidden from view by the rice.
***

OkoNOmiyaki

Noodle day. Crushing disappointment. Lukewarm soup. The worst okonomiyaki I have ever eaten. Heartache. Apple jelly. Milk.
**•

looking forward

apparently today's lunch will include okonomiyaki.
I wonder how much the school lunch team can mess this up...

Uploaded - 10\12\2008

Shortly after this was taken, more rice was added, rice with stuff in. The Mick Jagger was pretty good, I pretended I was topping mine up, but I actually emptied and replaced the tepid slop with warm stuff. Mmmmm.
Salad had egg in, meat was some sort of katsu with a bit of plum in. Weird.
***'

西小学のもち

今日は、西小学でもちを作る。土曜日ですけども、本当にかまいませんでした。
Today I'm in school on a Saturday, and I don't mind. I have been making and eating mochi. Full write up coming to joesworldtour.blogspot.com soon

*****

Lemon yoghurt noodle day

Friday rolls around again, which means it's noodle soup day. Today it's udon noodles and a salty broth. Salad is tuna and beansprouts, a good one. In the same bowl are 3 shumai, Chinese dumplings. There is a lemon yoghurt to ward away evil spirits and colds and milk continues to annoy me.
***•
the dot is a half

Chrimbo creme caramel

Today's lunch featured one of the best desserts on the list, a creme caramel with a picture of Santa on it.
Sadly, they don't call Santa 'annual present man', they call him Santa-San and he doesn't live on the moon. There's no room for him with the giant rabbit making mochi up there.
Hamburger-style meatballs were very good, as was the soup, which had bits of mochi in it. They weren't made by a giant rabbit on the moon.
Salad was a let down, covered in dried tuna flakes and smelling like fishfood and cabbage. Because that's what it was.
*** and a half

Blueberry Yoghurt et al

Gone is the standard milk, replaced with a pretty good blueberry yoghurt drink. Ginger beef and eggs for spicing up the old rice, a bit of J-soup with sweet potatoes in it and a satsuma.
A pretty good effort.
****

Uploaded - 02\12\2008

Swampy soup, rice, squeaky salad with minced bits of prawn/shrimp/crab in it, potato croquet, rice ad milk . I didn't drink the milk. Back to the teachers' eating-cave today, they have a heater and it was really cold.
***

Sweet, sweet butties

Not in school today, on a train instead, as I have to get a new Visa and my company has decided that it would be better for me to take a day's holiday and make the 8-hour round trip to Mito myself, rather than send their visa person to do it, despite the fact that she is already in Mito.
Lunch is Thanksgiving leftovers butty (turkey, paxo, mash) a soyjoy bar, satsuma (mikan in Japanese) and bottled water. Many, many times better than any school lunch.
Cranked up to 11.

Friday November 28th

Friday is Noodle Day. This week is curry noodles, but not my favourite curry noodles. There is a better, thicker curry soup sometimes.
Today we got a slice of apple in a plastic wrapper, which seemed like a waste, whole apples are better.
The weird think that looks a bit like purple dog poo in this picture is actually a sweet potato, it may or may not be related to Thanksgiving. We also had shumai, the Chinese dumplings you see next to the sweet potato. I 'accidentally' dropped mine into the curry.
4.0
(sorry this is a bit late, I'm actually writing this on a train to Mito, where I will get my re-entry visa, hopefully)

November 27th

Ate with the kids today. One of them introduced her friend as "Pan-Pan Man". Not sure what that was about.
Food was good, standard rice and milk, I left half my rice and all my milk. There was oden, I stand alone among the Doai ALTs in support of it, it's a salty broth with stuff floating in that you eat. Yummo.
Salad was good, but star of the show was the meat, curry and lotus root croquet. So good I ate it twice. Well, I had two of them.
4.3

26th November: Cheese what?

Today I have decided to start eating with the kids again. The teachers' dining room is driving me nuts. All the teachers assemble, wait ten minutes with their food in front of them while the last teacher meanders into the room. Once the highest-ranking member of the troop declares it is feeding time with his call of "itadakimasu", everyone tucks into their cold slop. The same ritual is repeated at the end of the meal, waiting for everyone to finish, then announcing "gochisosamadeshita" and everyone stacks their dishes up and is on their way. Took half an hour today.
Anyway, on to the meal.
Salad was good, 'cabbage' with chickpeas and kidney beans. There followed something of an anomaly. A cheese roll. This cheese roll was like a sausage roll except instead of sausage, there was cheap, soft cheese. Also, instead of pastry there was pulverised and reconstituted fish meat.
Today's rice had seaweed in it, which is pretty good, and the side dish was niku jaga (aka Mick Jagger). 3.8

School Lunch 25th November

A mid-level offering. Veg was OK, nothing special. Soup was miso with carrots, seaweed and tofu in it. Even the stars of the show, fried chicken and peanut blob, fail to raise the dish above mediocrity.
3.5

A New Beginning

Armed with an iPhone and a daily food-quality gamble, our hero launches a new blog cataloguing and reviewing his school lunches. A feast for the eyes and mind. First real post Monday...