I Love Yuzu (Both the Fruit and the Band)

Satsumanma
Yuzu flavored miso oden
Tofu and nameko (a type of mushroom) miso soup
Milk
(823 calories)

Notes:
Satsumanma is a type of maze-gohan in which the rice has been mixed with diced satsumaimo (a type of Japanese sweet potato that has purple skin and yellow flesh, and is very prevalent in fall cooking) and satsuma-age (a flat, fried fish paste cake). And, despite not having the word “satsuma” in it’s name, there was also some pork thrown in with our rice today as well.

Oden is a common dish seen in the winter, as it’s composed of several ingredients (most commonly hard-boiled eggs, firm or grilled blocks of tofu, thick slices of daikon radish, cabbage or konbu rolls, blocks of jellied konjac, and a variety of minced fish cakes) that have been heated over a long period of time in a sweet soy sauce-based broth. Most people then eat these simmered ingredients with either spicy mustard or yuzu kosho (another spicy condiment flavored with the Japanese citrus, yuzu). You can of course make oden at home, but it tastes best when the ingredients have been simmering for several hours. That’s why many people choose to just order some at an izakaya (a type of Japanese bar, where you can also order many different kinds of foods to snack on as you socialize and drink) or pick up a bowl to-go from any local convenience store (it sounds kind of odd, but I really do love to pop on down to my 7-11 for a big bowl of hot, tasty oden when the weather is cold and gross).

While oden ingredients are often served in the broth they were cooked in, the oden we’re served at school gets plated up without much, if any, of the broth. Today’s oden, however, is a variation known as miso oden, which is commonly served covered with a thick, sweet miso sauce instead of the broth the ingredients were boiled in (as the broth used for this type of oden is just a plain and simple konbu stock without any additional flavorings). The ingredients you see here are boiled quail eggs, carrot, daikon radish, white jellied konjac, and chikuwa. The chikuwa are the tube-shaped pieces in the picture. To make chikuwa, a sweet, white fish paste is wrapped around a round rod that rotates over a grill, giving this fish cake it’s characteristic bamboo shape (hence “chikuwa” is written using the kanji [Chinese] character for bamboo).

While miso oden is not a particularly rare sight, it’s not common to have the yuzu flavor with the sweet miso sauce. Yuzu is a yellow Japanese citrus fruit that is sometimes referred to as a Japanese lime. It’s got a very unique and delicious flavor, but many of my students didn’t like it with today’s dish because they found the addition of yuzu to this familiar dish too strange. The city I live in apparently has some historic ties to Kochi city (in the Kochi prefecture), and so they’re now sister cities. Kochi is famous for yuzu, so this month there were a couple days that featured yuzu as a main flavor in our school lunches to celebrate this association. 

Additionally, today’s miso soup featured nameko. Nameko are these little, slippery mushrooms that are practically impossible to catch with chopsticks (particularly if the miso soup you’re eating is composed almost entirely of just the round mushroom caps with no stems to grab on to). They’re delicious, but I hate battling with the mushrooms to eat this soup... Nameko might just be the reason why Japanese people usually just drink miso soup right from the bowl. (I'm kidding, of course... but I swear, it's impossible to eat them otherwise!)

Sounds like "Mick Jagger"

Tuna and konbu rice

Nikujaga (Meat and potatoes simmered in a sweet broth)

Fried scallops

Mikan (a mandarin orange, or tangerine)

Milk

(937 calories)

Notes: Konbu is a type of seaweed that is most often used behind the scenes to flavor broths in Japanese cooking, but it shows up in finished dishes as well. Today’s rice was a kind of maze-gohan (mixed rice) in which ingredients were mixed into the white rice after it was cooked (in contrast to takikomi-gohan, in which raw ingredients are thrown in with the uncooked rice before the whole cooking process begins).  The tuna used today is just canned, flaky tuna like we have back in the states, which is often (but not always) distinguished from the good slabs of sushi-grade tuna meat here by using the borrowed English word “tuna” (ツナ) as opposed to the native Japanese word “maguro” (鮪). “Sea chicken” (シーチキン) is also sometimes used to refer to the canned stuff as well.

Legend has it that when Japan was first introduced to the idea of Western beef stew, they adjusted it to suit their palate by making this version of it using a concoction of soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar for the broth (a combination of ingredients that shows up in almost everything, it seems).  The result was this now popular staple of Japanese home cooking called nikujaga (literally “meat [肉 – niku] and potatoes [ジャガイモ – jagaimo]”). Like beef stew, it’s a warm, hearty dish that is great in the wintertime and warms the soul as much as it does the belly. It is most often made using sliced beef, but the today’s version of it included pork slices, potatoes, onions, carrots, shirataki (konjac noodles), and green beans. But, despite being a hearty concoction of meat and potatoes, most people here still don't find the dish complete unless served with some of that good ol' Japanese sticky rice as we can see here in today's menu.

The next town over is famous for scallops (帆立 –  hotate), so they’re a very popular food in these parts. Frying them and drizzling them with Worcestershire sauce like this is one popular option, but you can of course find them prepared many different ways. They’re often eaten raw, either served as-is (sashimi) or on top of vinegar-seasoned rice (sushi), but grilling them is another popular option. Sometimes they’re put on skewers and grilled with just a light seasoning of salt and pepper, but in Hokkaido you’re more likely to find them at yakiniku (Korean barbecue) parties just plopped on the grill still on their shell, bubbling away in a combination of soy sauce and butter (because they’re positively divine when prepared this way). Also, since they’re a local specialty here, you can readily buy boxes or bags of individually wrapped scallops to pass out as souvenirs (as it’s pretty much mandatory that you buy some sort of little edible souvenirs for your family, friends, and coworkers any time you travel somewhere). They either come soft (sometimes flavored with things like soy sauce, sometimes accompanied by a lump of cheese) or dried and somewhat chewy. They’re kind of pricey and considered quite the delicacy, and they’re easy to eat if you need a quick scallop fix. Just unwrap and eat – no heating or preparation necessary.

And finally we have dessert: mikan! Mikan show up in the grocery stores once winter starts approaching, and I pick up a bag of them pretty much every time I go to the store during these months. They’re easy to peel and amazingly delicious, and they’re almost always seedless (they are so much easier to eat than a regular orange). Many people buy them by the boxful, and almost any house you enter during the winter months will have a little basket of them set out for guests.

Kyuushoku Goes Korean

White rice
Bibimbap (A dish consisting of various toppings served on rice)
Suiton-jiru (A soup with boiled flour dumplings)
Takuan-dzuke (Yellow slices of pickled daikon radish)
Milk
(889 calories)

Notes: Bibimbap (ビビンバ - “bibimba” in Japanese) is a Korean dish of meat and vegetables served on top of rice.  It is often crowned with things like sautéed meat slices (often beef), bean sprouts, spinach, julienned carrots, a spicy red Korean chili pepper paste called “gochujang,” and egg (most commonly just a raw egg or egg yolk plopped in the middle that is then mixed in before eating). Ishiyaki bibinba (石焼ビビンバ), or bibimbap that is served in a heated stone bowl, is also a popular choice at many restaurants here too, as the hot stone gives the rice a flavorful char on the bottom that really tastes great when mixed up with the runny egg and other ingredients. But our school lunches don’t get quite that fancy with it, as you can see here.  Our version just came with scrambled egg, chopped pork cooked with ginger, and bean sprouts (もやし – moyashi, perhaps the cheapest vegetable you can get in the stores here for around 20 cents a bag).

“Suiton” (水団) refers to the boiled flour dumplings that have been dropped into today’s vegetable and pork soup, and I’m told by my coworkers that this dish has kind of an old-time peasant food feel to it (as it was an easy, filling soup to make on a tight budget).

The bright yellow, slightly sweet daikon radish pickles are also a pretty popular item at school, and many kids are thrilled if they’re lucky enough to snag an extra helping from any less-enthused classmates. Usually it's the girls who shy away from them, as the pickles are also super crunchy and therefore chewing them produces a lot of noise (many of the women teachers have expressed to me their own embarrassment over eating such a noisy food).

The Seaweed Man Cometh

As I mentioned in my first post, every so often I'll deviate from my usual school lunch presentations to talk about some other aspect of the food culture here that fascinates me. I didn't expect to post one so soon, but a recent event at my junior high reminded me that there's something I'd love to talk about.

And that event was the arrival of the seaweed salesman! ("...Wait, the what?")

I know, it sounds like kind of an odd thing to get excited over, but I love it when this guy turns up at our school with his big plastic bins of seaweed (海藻 - kaisou) products and free samples.

Many of us in the states are already familiar with nori, a type of seaweed used in sushi rolls to contain all the wacky ingredients we put in our Westernized version of them (people here still get a little freaked out when I tell them that I love things like cream cheese or jalapenos or mangos and walnuts in or on my sushi rolls). But there are many, many kinds of seaweed that are regularly consumed in this country, such as konbu, wakame, mozuku, and hijiki (and don't worry - many of these will show up in the school lunches I'll blog about later). Each one has its own unique color and shape and flavor, and though I never thought I'd say it... I've really become quite a fan of all these different types of seaweed.

To get personal for a moment, before I came to Japan as a study abroad student in college I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Basically, I was told my thyroid didn't work and I would have to take a pill every morning for the rest of my life because of it. Well, that's fun. Everyone loves being told there's something out of wack in their body. So, being the curious soul I am, I began poking around on the internet to try to learn more about what this hypo-whatever condition was and if there was anything else I should do to keep myself healthy.

One interesting thing I repeatedly ran across was the belief that soy products negatively impact the thyroid and, more specifically, can interfere with the absorption of thyroid medication. I'm personally not sure exactly how true that statement is, but I repeatedly read that people with this condition should avoid eating a lot of soy products. Like tofu. And edamame. And miso.

This discovery did not bode well for a student heading to Japan. Furthermore, I studied abroad in Nagoya, a city famous for it's extremely prevalent red miso. Delicious red miso, I should add, that I was happy to encounter in, on, or with just about everything I ate over there... so staying away from soy products was kind of out of the question for me.

"But wait a minute," I asked myself. "If soy products are this detrimental to thyroid function, how come the entire country of Japan doesn't have rampant thyroid problems like this?" (A common question to ask yourself, no?) I decided to poke around on the internet some more. And it turns out (according to the sites I stumbled upon) that a big factor in maintaining a healthy thyroid in a food culture rich in soy products is a food culture equally as rich in mineral-packed seaweed products. A good balance is everything, I guess!

So not only are these seaweeds interesting and tasty, but they're quite healthy for you too! Especially because of the iodine and selenium they contain, which I hear boosts thyroid hormone production. We've all heard that Japan traditionally has a very healthy food culture, and this part of it is just one of the many reasons why I suppose.

So, getting back on topic - what does one buy from a seaweed salesman? Well, as I mentioned before, there are many different kinds of seaweed to choose from, and they come in a variety of products. Konbu is a type of seaweed often used to make soup stocks in Japan, but there's nothing wrong with eating it as-is as well.

The seaweed man (as I like to call him) sells a jar of slimy konbu threads mixed with soy sauce, sugar, and coarse grated wasabi. This is a faculty favorite, and I've bought it twice now myself. You're supposed to put it on top of rice, but I've found that it also tastes really good on veggies too (cucumber being my favorite).

 

Yeah, it looks kind of gross, but trust me - if you can get over the "icky" factor of eating slimy foods, there are a lot of tasty things to be found in Japan. 

He often puts this stuff, called "natto konbu," with some sashimi wakame for all of us to sample. Sashimi wakame is, I believe, the main product that he sells. It's basically just wakame, a type of seaweed commonly found in miso soup, that you can also just eat as-is (hence the "sashimi" in the name, since you can eat it "raw" like the raw fish dish here known as, of course, sashimi). You can also buy dried wakame to put in soups or chadzuke (a simple dish of rice served soaked in tea with various toppings like salmon, pickled plums (umeboshi), spicy cod roe (tarako), sesame seeds, bits of seaweed, etc.).

You can also buy softened hijiki seaweed to mix into onigiri (rice balls), finely cut bits of nori to put on salads or pasta dishes (I do this ALL the time), or you can even just buy a big ol' bag of various seaweeds mixed together that you can eat straight up as a seaweed salad. There really is a surprising amount of products to choose from. As one of those Americans who knew nothing of Japanese seaweed outside of sushi nori before moving here, I've been pleasantly surprised by the variety of seaweeds I've had the pleasure of eating. It's still hard for me to believe, but... I really do love seaweed! If you ever get the chance to sample these foods, I strongly recommend you do! (And while you're at it, try Korean nori too! I down those salty little sheets of crisp seaweed like potato chips.)

A Meatloaf of Sorts

Just look at that. Fascinating, isn’t it? And I get to be a part of this lunchtime process almost every day. What did I do to be so blessed?

So are you ready to join me on this crazy culinary adventure? Yes? Then follow me!

Oh, but before we begin, I’m kind of just putting up the pages of my original kyuushoku report in the order I originally typed them in. Hence, many of these posts may have been written months (or even years) ago. So if it’s, say, December and I start talking about how delicious Hokkaido asparagus is in the summer, that’s why. Also, the names of the dishes (or rather, their awkward translations by yours truly) and amount of calories contained in them are pulled straight from the school menus distributed to all faculty and students every month, and the “notes” are just my own little description and comments.

Anyway, on to the first post. Itadakimasu!

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White rice
Matsukaze yaki (Kind of like a flat meatloaf made from ingredients like tofu, chicken, miso, panko bread crumbs, sake, soy sauce, sugar, and mirin, then topped with sesame seeds.)
Western-style kimpira (thinly sliced pork, gobou [burdock root], carrot, and green beans cooked in soy sauce, mirin, and sugar.)
Cabbage and abura age (deep-fried tofu skins) miso soup
Milk
(814 calories)
Notes: Kinpira is usually just thin slices of burdock root (gobou) and carrot sautéed in soy sauce and sugar and garnished with sesame seeds (and sometimes crushed red pepper for an added kick). If it’s made from any other ingredients it’s usually specified in the name. For example, we’ve had potatoes cooked kimpira-style at lunch before, and so it was called imo kimpira (“potato kimpira”). I guess meat and green beans made this day’s kimpira look more like youshoku (western-style food) than washoku (Japanese-style food) to them, hence the name. Also, matsukaze yaki is not a common food, but it shows up around New Year’s in some households. It’s amazing and easy to make, so after eating this I begged for the school’s recipe and now like to make this at home.

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Everyone at work is amused at just how much I’ve taken a liking to matsukaze yaki, sometimes going so far as to blurt out things like “we’re having Danielle’s favorite for lunch today!” Luckily, this dish has shown up at my junior high (and elementary school) on multiple occasions, often paired with some form of kinpira (which is also a favorite of mine). Here’s another school lunch featuring pretty much the same menu, only with egg and nira (Chinese chive) miso soup and a kinpira made with dried shiitake mushrooms instead of green beans:

Greetings

Hello and hajimemashite ("nice to meet you," basically). Allow me to welcome you to "The Gakkou Gourmet," a possibly interesting blog about food in Japan - more specifically, about food served in Japanese schools (gakkou).

So who am I and why should you listen to anything I say (or write)? What makes me an authority on school food in Japan? Well... not much, really. I currently work in Hokkaido, Japan, as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) on the JET Program teaching English to students in 6 different schools. I am entering my 3rd year as an ALT, and over these past few years I have gotten to see, experience, and eat my way through many new and unique things that I never would have encountered back home in the US. I moved to Japan only 2 months after I graduated college, and while I had attended a university a few hours away from home, living here in Japan is the first time I've really, truly had to fend for myself (though the people here have always been eager to help me adjust to living in a foreign land). For the first time I had a wave of various bills to pay and keep track of, an impossibly complex trash system to adjust to, a first car to take care of (which has given me nothing but repair bills and heartburn)... and, last but not least, a whole new kind of grocery store to figure out in order to keep myself fed.

This new food culture became an obsession of mine, and to this day I still love slowly meandering through the grocery stores (I swear I find something new every single time I do this). One of the luckiest parts of my placement in the JET Program was my school level assignment; I teach at 5 elementary schools and one junior high school. What this means is that every day I go to school, I get to eat kyuushoku, or school lunch, with the kids (high school students bring their own obentou, or lunch box). This has been an invaluable insight into the Japanese food culture that I otherwise would not have gotten to experience.

I am by no means an expert on any of the information presented here, so feel free to ask me questions about anything in my posts or correct me if I'm wrong about something. I'm pleased with how much my Japanese has improved from living in this country for so long, but I will forever be a student of this challenging language, and information about the food I'm eating (and consequently my understanding of said information) is still always getting lost in translation. Still, I hope to present you with an interesting and accurate look into the food culture of Japan through my posts. Let's enjoying school lunch! (Sorry - bad Engrish had to make it's way in here at least once. I promise not to do that very much.)

So let me take a moment to explain how this blog will work. My step father is a chef instructor at a culinary university in the states, and over the course of my stay in Japan I have typed up a sort of "Kyuushoku Report" for him and his students (and any other interested parties) to look through. What started as a simple, fun way to kill extra time at my desk soon ballooned into a 40-page beast, and I'm still adding onto it any time an interesting school lunch comes my way. This blog will contain photos and descriptions of various school lunches I have had the pleasure of devouring... and perhaps sometimes I will even deviate from this formula to blather on about some other food or oddity that has piqued my interest (and trust me, there are plenty of them).

So, to start things off, allow me to present to you the first page of the kyuushoku report my family and friends have been pressuring me to put on the internet. (And after this wall of text, I'll bring on the food - I promise!)

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School Lunches in Japan

Kyuushoku (給食 – literally “supplied meal”) are the lunches served at elementary and junior high schools in Japan (high school students generally have to bring their own boxed lunches, though I hear some food items can be purchased at the schools). Everyone eats the same meal on a given day, and meals are always eaten in the classroom (even in junior high students are in their homeroom class for the entire day, as the teachers and not the students rotate between class periods). Each class is divided into groups (han) that are designated with a certain responsibility for the week. One of these duties is kyuushoku touban – basically “being on school lunch duty.” The students in this group must go to a designated place in the school to retrieve their class’s food trolley, bring it back to their classroom, and then serve lunch to all the students in the class (often while wearing aprons and bandanas tied around their heads – very cute on the little elementary kids). No one may start eating, however, until everyone has been served and the students in charge lead everyone in a unanimous “itadakimasu” (a set phrase you say before eating a meal).

Kyuushoku is prepared either at a designated kyuushoku center (a separate building where the food is prepared and then delivered to the schools) or in some cases it’s prepared right at the school itself (the two schools in my town prepare their own lunches, and I personally think they taste better than the ones that come out of the neighboring city’s kyuushoku center). Kyuushoku comes in three varieties: bread days, rice days, and noodle days. These are usually set to specific days of the week, though how often something is served varies between schools. At my junior high school (where all of these pictures were taken – elementary lunches are often a lot smaller in portion) we have three rice days per week, one bread day, and one noodle day. Interestingly enough, I read an article somewhere that said it was the kyuushoku system, implemented with assistance from the American government after WWII, which raised the first generation of bread and pasta-loving Japanese people. According to the article, the popularity of Western wheat products in this country now owes itself to the fact that America supplied Japan with bread (cheap and easy to pass out to many students) during the early days of kyuushoku. In fact, there are campaigns out now to get the Japanese public to eat more rice because it's popularity has diminished in comparison to bread and pasta products. Rice pasta and rice-flour breads are also becoming popular for this reason.

Anyway, for your reading pleasure, I took pictures of and wrote about some of our lunches at my junior high school. I’m usually not at this school on the bread and noodle days, so (not surprisingly) the lunches that follow will mostly be lunches served on the aforementioned rice days. I think my coworkers all think I’m a little crazy for snapping photos of the food before running off to join the kids for lunch, but hey, this stuff is interesting. A lot of the things I’ve been served at school are dishes pretty much every Japanese person knows and has probably eaten at home, but aren’t exactly things you’d encounter otherwise. Kind of like how in America we all know of and have eaten a PB&J for lunch before, but you probably wouldn’t run into that kind of stuff if you were a foreigner eating at restaurants or cooking for yourself at home.