School Lunch: Japanese Style

I recently had the pleasure of eating lunch at Marin's school, to get an idea of what Marin experiences every day. Many mothers came to enjoy the same, each wearing an apron, a face mask, a scarf on their head, and indoor shoes. I took this picture off the internet to show you how Marin and her class do lunch every day. The white attire is their lunch uniform. The children serve each other lunch from two short, slender tables that are brought into the classroom just for lunch. One table pulls out from under the other. The Japanese really have their own unique way of doing pretty much everything.


Lunch was served in a classroom in the same way it is every day for the kids, and it was very much like what is pictured above. I really enjoyed it! I was surrounded by Japanese mothers, and I couldn't understand anything that they said. It is such a different experience being in the minority.
I sat next to another mother I met recently who is Brazilian. She has lived here in Japan for 10 years and has picked up some of the language. Other than that, she speaks only Portuguese. We sat together and had as much of a conversation as we could. It was quite amusing since there wasn't much overlap in the words, in any language, that both of us know. Between my few words of Japanese, and a few more words in Spanish, which is close enough to Portuguese, and her limited Japanese, we could communicate a few basic things. She's cool lady and I enjoyed her company.

At the end of lunch a survey was collected. I couldn't write much about the food, except, in romanji, "oishii kata" --- "It was delicious". I had to laugh to myself when I had to look at my name tag to remember how to write my name. It looks like this:
エミリー アンダーソン
How often as an adult do you have to think really hard about how to write your own name? It's funny, but very humbling.