School Lunches and Library Reading

Here we are, another post. I’m writing this now as I only taught two of the six periods today. Which is actually a nice change from teaching five of the six and being given a job to do during my free period. Mind you those two days went by super fast so it wasn’t all bad.

Do to popular demand, and by that I mean mom suggested it, here’s some info about school lunches. To start with, everyone eats these lunches. And I mean everyone. From elementary school until the end of junior high you have to eat them. And if you’re a teacher at an elementary or junior high school you have to eat them too. No opting out.

Now what we eat changes every day. Most days there’s rice and some kind of soup. Most of the soup is fine but one day I had some kind of dark soup with seaweed in it. Now I’ve eaten seaweed before. It’s not bad. But when it’s been boiled into an almost goo that you can’t really chew but you can’t swallow straight off, I can’t do it. I tried about three times but after the third time my gag reflex got triggered I gave up. Which meant I have to sneak what was rest back into the empty pot so that I didn’t get in trouble.

Because that’s another element of school lunches. You’re supposed to eat all of it. I had finished one day at Miya JHS when the teacher held up a plate and asked who’d left bits of salad all over the plate. It was me. She laughed and I got by again because I’m a foreigner but if it’d been a student they’d have gotten in trouble.

So I’m sure you’re now wondering if you have to eat everything how do you deal with food you honestly can’t eat. I’ve had this happen when they served shishamo. Shishamo, for those of you lucky enough to have never come across it, is a pregnant fish, compelte with bones and eyes, wrapped in some kind of batter and fried. I can’t eat it. Not after the first time when I thought it was a shrimp and bit the head right off. Never again!

Anyway, when you want to get rid of something you don’t like, all you have to do is find the kid in the room who likes it and give it to them. The other ALTs told me to do this. Then I saw one of the teachers, who also doesn’t like shishamo, foisting there’s off on the kids so I didn’t feel so bad. It’s win-win. I don’t have to eat anything I don’t like and the kids get more of what they do like.

Outside of school, this past Saturday I joined Krys and Tom at the Takayama public library for the monthly English reading hour there. Parents bring their kids to listen to English storybooks. This time was Halloween themed. The kids range in age from baby, the shiniest headed baby we’d ever seen, to one of Tom’s first graders. Most of these kids are only there because their parents want them exposed to English/have them improve their English.

Mind you, most of them seem to have a lot of fun. Especially when we get Head Shoulders Knees and Toes going. One kid just sat and watched and at the end began clapping. There was this one little girl who just bounced the entire time. Her and her older sister must have said goodbye to use twenty times. They kept waving and shouting goodbye then coming back and doing it again. They were really cute!

The other great thing about the library is that they’ll order in pretty much any English book an ALT requests. That’s because they’re trying to improve their English section but they don’t know what people like. So I don’t have to buy books. Not that that’s going to stop me. I still prefer owning books to borrowing them.

So that’s pretty much it. Nothing too exciting’s been happening. This weekend’s one of the huge Takayama festivals so I’ll be going to that with the other ALTs. Anyway, bye for now!