Kind of Sort of Christmas Dinner

According to the stats, the absolute most popular page on my blog was a post about Japanese school lunches. Since it's inception, people have flocked to it by the hundreds through google. (I really need update it in the new year.) My blogging about school is closely tied to how outside the norm it is; it's very easy to fall into the trap of apathy when routine and familiarity sets in. Today's school lunch was something I had never experienced before so it became perfect fodder for my jaded foreign soul - er, blog. Today was sort of a Japanese-school-lunch-on-a-budget version of Christmas dinner. So it involved the Japanese's mental conception of a western christmas dinner crossed with the cold tasteless food of kyuushoku. At lunch time, instead of the kids eating in their prescribed classrooms, we joined in the gym at low tables on mats to eat our "Christmas Dinner". It consisted of some roasted chicken, broth-based soup, sushi rice (very christmasy my kids stated), cake, mini-tomatoes, and boiled wakeme salad. I found the portions today much bigger than usual. "Cold and tasteless" deserves a wider explanation; I actually ate every scrap. The food gets cold because in Japan there are numerous rituals around meals, those rituals take along time to accomplish because we are working with kids. Thus, we sit there like sad hungry dogs in front of full plates while the food gets cold, waiting for everything to be perfect. Tasteless because school lunches have to be very healthy. Salt, fat, sauces, basically anything delicious, has to be kept to a minimum in the name of health. Everyone being extremely hungry is one of the best things going for it and normally my brain enjoys the food and the company of the kids, whose wondering conversation, curious questions, and innocent blunt comments are great entertainment. I was, of course, in exceptionally high spirits. Most of the past week has been centered around Christmas and in planning for today I was favoring games (Yes, I am an awesome teacher). At first I was overruled but once we saw staying with a normal class would be like teaching monkeys, my suggestions were adopted and we played Canadian dodgeball in the gym, much to the kids' and - reluctantly - the teachers' delight. While the younger ones followed me around like baby chicks while singing the only choral they knew well, "We wish you a Merry Christmas," the older ones rolled their eyes at my carefully chosen Christmas clothing and merry behaviour.