Day 22: Hungry Menu/Another Welcome Party

Today is the one day of the month when the school lunch is fairly skimpy. All we got to eat this afternoon was a bowl of rice complete with a few specks of veggies and meat, as well as two tiny dried fish (with an umeboshi, which is a reddish/pinkish dried fruit that is really sour and salty and some tsukemono, which is a kind of Japanese pickle that comes in many different varieties).

I guess you could say the meal's official name is the "Thanks for our daily rice" meal, but I call it the "Hungry Menu." The main purpose of the meal is to remind everyone that we are rather fortunate to be able to eat a lot of food and that we should not complain when we are served very little. I think it's actually a pretty cool idea. The problem is, just like most days, the students and teachers are allowed to get seconds. That makes zero sense to me, but if you stay long enough in Japan, you'll find plenty of things that don't make any sense!

The other thing that is going on today is the final welcome party of the new year. This one is for the one new teacher who moved in to the apartment complex where I (and many other teachers and their families) live. This year, three teachers and one person from the personnel department moved out, but only the one teacher moved in, meaning there are now several empty apartments.

Anyone out there care to move in?