Joe's Japanese Lunches

Wednesday 21st october

2009-10-21T13:07:00.001+09:00

It's been a while. Lunch today was pretty good. I liked the sukiyaki. Bonkers-teacher-who-thinks-I-speak-french asked me what 'pandemic' was in English. He then told me that "day-by-day, many students become influenza". I nodded. He only speaks to me because no-one else speaks to him. He's harmless enough and an occasional source of amusement.

Saturday 18th April

2009-04-18T12:29:00.001+09:00

Yesterday I noticed that the blackboard in the teachers' room had an entry for today. I had also been invited to an enkai (work-based food and booze fun) taking place this evening. I hadn't been asked to work and was going to leave it but conscientiousness got the better of me and I emailed in the affirmative, so here I am. I'm in a surprisingly good mood considering.
Lunch was a bento, I'm not going to list eveything but it was good. Off to do some teaching in front of the PTA now.

Friday 30th January

2009-01-30T13:00:00.001+09:00

Today is pay day. School finished early in December, and I took some time off too, so I am getting a fair bit less than usual. This has led me to scrounge what I can. Luckily, my tastes are exactly opposite to the kids so if I like something there are usually a lot of leftovers. Today I am taking home some slices of oranges and fried ham, cheese and egg. There is also a huge milk surplus driven by rampant illness throughout the school.
Today lunch was the stuff mentioned above as well as curry udon, a soup with thick noodles in it.
Good stuff.
Robert: Plant.

Thursday 29th January

2009-01-30T07:45:00.002+09:00

A request menu. These sporadic events occur when the woman in charge of school dinners visits a school. This is the first time we've had one since I have been reading the menus, which Is about 4 months. Today's dinner was chosen by Uematsu Elementary School, which is one of Evan's schools, up near where I live. Food was pretty good: the salad had meat in, the soup was a Chinese-style chicken one and there were shumai (Chinese dumplings). All in all a good day.
Robert: Palmer.

Monday 26th January

2009-01-28T12:19:00.001+09:00

Maybe it was in celebration of Burns' night on Sunday. As my brain clambered through the fog of katakana transliteration It slowly dawned on me that "スコチエギ" (sukochiegu) meant "Scotch egg". Fantastic. 'Milk pan' ( "pan" being the Japanese word for bread, coming via the Portugese) is probably the best school dinner bread, and there's always loads for me to take home thanks to the Japanese school-child's dislike for the stuff. Bonus. The soup was pretty good for dipping, too.
Jefferson: Starship.

Wednesday 21st January

2009-01-28T12:12:00.001+09:00

Niku Jaga aka Mick Jagger makes a welcome return to the fold. Seaweed-enhanced rice is always a plus. I had two taco (octopus, you could see the tentacles when you bit into it) fries because there was a lot of food knocking about again. Waste not, want not. Mottainai. Etc.
Rating: Jefferson, Massachusetts.

Monday 19th January

2009-01-28T12:07:00.001+09:00

Fried fish and spinnach salad with bits of egg in it, surprisingly good. Rubbish bread inteaded for 'peanut cream' sandwiches. Good when dipped in the soup (one slice) or used to make a fish butty (the other slice). Some disapproval caused. Loads of bread came home with me because the 1st grade are skiing, and free bread is free bread.
Jefferson rating: Thomas.

Friday, 16th January 2009

2009-01-28T12:01:00.001+09:00

Friday is noodles. Standard noodle fayre, maybe kitsune (fox) udon. Not sure Kitsune udon doesn't contain any fox meat, I think the name comes from it being a mix of all sorts of business, like a fox might eat. The same goes for tanooki udon. Most exciting was the pizza man (again, doesn't contain man), 'man' being a Chinese food made from something very like bread around some sort of filling. Norman Cook wasn't involved in any way.
If this was a Jefferson, it would be: airplane.

Thursday 15th Jan

2009-01-17T12:37:00.001+09:00

Brilliance. Eggs in sonething like breadcrumbs, seaweed and something salad with sesame dressing. Also featured curry and rice, a classic. There was a weird snack made from almonds and fish heads, I didn't eat them.
Rating in the form of an animal: polar bear.

Chrimbo dinner

2009-01-03T01:30:00.001+09:00

Heavenly. No number exists that could do it justice.

Turning over a new leaf

2008-12-18T18:17:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-16T07:46:00.001+09:00

Amazing, just amazing.

A late one

2008-12-12T13:26:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-12T13:14:00.001+09:00

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

looking forward

2008-12-12T11:38:00.000+09:00

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

Uploaded - 10\12\2008

2008-12-10T07:53:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-06T12:45:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-05T13:16:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-05T12:39:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-03T13:18:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-02T18:09:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-01T16:45:00.001+09:00

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

2008-12-01T16:44:00.001+09:00

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

2008-11-27T16:22:00.001+09:00

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?

2008-11-26T16:17:00.001+09:00

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

2008-11-25T13:17:00.001+09:00

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

2008-11-22T14:44:00.000+09:00

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...