As part of my job responsibilities, I have to eat school lunch with the students. This post will just give you a sample of what I’ve eaten over the past week.

In Japan, school lunch (kyuushoku – 給食) is cooked in a local location and then delivered to the schools. My school district has an A-menu and a B-menu, with the B-menu being a day behind the A-menu in what is served. I go to an A-menu school Monday, Tuesday, and Wedneday and a B-menu school on Thursday and Friday. For me this means I eat the same lunch on Wednesdays and Thursdays. On the flip side, because A-menu school gets noodles on Fridays and B-menu school gets noodles on Mondays, I always miss noodle day (ramen or udon)😣. 

The menu is usually posted in the classrooms/teacher’s room for the month or it can be found online. I googled my town name and 給食 and it came up easily. The menus online also tell you the calories in each meal. They seem to average between 500-750 calories.  

I pay ¥3,900 for my lunch every month, which is around $35 with today’s exchange rate. 

Recently, I’ve taken to making a note of the food I like and looking up recipes on Cookpad so I can get more variation in my diet at home too. I don’t always like everything served, but I have tried many foods I probably wouldn’t have on my own and can tolerate more flavors these days.

Favorite part of this meal was the soup and the rice. I could go the rest of my life and not eat konbu (kelp) like this again and be content. As for the mackerel, it was okay.

I liked the everything this time! I particularly love naganegi in anything.

I normally avoid seaweed as much as possible, but I like wakame rice. That mamemame salad had different kinds of beans in it and was pretty good. The miso soup was mostly tofu and mushrooms. There were almost too many mushrooms in there for me.having both fruit and drinkable yogurt was a welcome rare treat for me.

Curry day is a favorite in school, but I personally dislike curry. It just so happens that every time we have curry, it is on a Wednesday, which means I have to eat it twice. I’m starting to find things about it to enjoy, but I still won’t go out of my way to make it.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my lunch for the week! I look forward to snapping more pictures of my food in the future.