Lunchtime in elementary school is a very big deal. Kids in Japan do not bring their own lunch to school. Pretty much everyone eats the lunch provided by the school. (I'm sure some kids with severe allergies bring their own lunches. But those are the exception, not the rule.)
Unlike American schools, Japanese kids eat in their classroom. Each week a group of kids are on "kitchen duty". These kids are in charge of picking up the meal from the kitchen, serving it, and returning all the dirty dishes back to the kitchen.
Typically, while the selected few report to the kitchen to pick up the meal, the remaining students reconfigure the classroom for meal time. Classrooms are often changed to have everyone sitting in a large circle, which helps with chatting. Due to Covid, students currently sit in rows and are not allowed to chat while they eat.
At my son's school, the food is cooked on site using fresh produce. It doesn't arrive in frozen packets only to be heated and served. I had a question about the milk they serve the kids, and I received the answer from the school nutritionist. I found that to be really impressive.
My son has been looking forward to kitchen duty since he started eating lunch at school. I think the highlight for him is wearing the uniform. Each kid gets to wear a jacket and hat when they are on kitchen duty. They also wear a mask, but that is standard these days regardless of kitchen duty. When explaining this to me, my son enthusiastically informed me that at the end of the week he got to bring home the uniform so I could wash it. Lucky me!
Within minutes of returning from school today, he put on the uniform to model it for me. Although I am biased, I did think it was rather cute.
I'm glad that my son enjoys his school lunch experience. I'm even more glad that it appears to be 1000% more healthy than what I ate as a kid.
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