The Kids and their lunches

I finally had a chance to meet the little kiddos on Tuesday and all I can I say is, sooo cute. There are 13 of them and they are 3/4 years old. I have only had them for two days but you can diffenently see their little personalities shine through already. I have 10 Japanese students and 3 foreign students so basically 3 out of 13 can understand what I am saying. They all run up to me and start talking miles a minute in Japanese and I stand there with this look on my face like I want to understand you but I have no clue what your saying. It's also absolutely adorable when they speak Japanese I don't know what it is but they sound like they are speaking gibberish.

I was completely taken aback when I saw the lunches these kids bring to school. I knew before coming to Japan that their attention to detail is surpass anything in the U.S. These lunches are gourmet meals to say the least. Presentation is very important in Japan and this does not exclude 4 year old kids lunches. First of all they are packed in very cutely decorated plastic containers with separated areas for the food. They are put in miniature cupcake wrappers (not really cupcake wrappers) to make the food look good. These kids bring rice balls, sausages, fish, seafood, sliced fruit, veggies...all of which is cooked and prepared by their mothers (I work at a very posh school, most of the mom's are stay at home mothers). I have never seen anything like it, but that is coming from someone who has spent time in Title One schools (inner city) where the kids only nutritious meal is from the school.

I just remembered I read an article about this from my Anthropology of Food class in college-where the mothers in Japan try to outdo each other with the school lunches because that is thier "day job" and it is thier way of showing thier kids how much they love them. (A very water downed version of the article-I never really understood any of my college reading) I wish I could remember the name of the article, hmm.

This one is for you D (got your email :)

Time for bed, my kids are throwing me a birthday party tomarrow-must rest up for that and a big weekend, my first festival. I am very excited it's a ceramic festival, wahoo!!