A Day Of Gluttony

Check out this meal. Now check it out again. Do you see all of that food? That's a lot.

We almost always have a main dish, a salad, a soup, and rice, but we usually don't have all that plus a dessert.

You also know by now that I rarely take the rice, so I usually only have three "plates" of food on my tray. Today, however, since we had a special kind of rice, I took some. That's why there's so much food in the picture.

Unfortunately, the "baby"bamboo salad was not very good, for two reasons.

For one, there was simply way, way, way too much of it in that bowl. (Remember that one meal with the "lonely" salad? Well, this salad was the exact opposite. There was enough bamboo in that bowl to feed an army.)

For two, the bamboo was mixed with katsuobushi, which I just don't like. The result: After a couple bites, the salad became and instant giveaway to a vacuum cleaner! Thank you, Mr. Honda (the student, not the teacher)!

The soup wasn't very good either. I don't think I need to do much explaining. Just look at the picture and you can see for yourself. Does that soup look appetizing? I think not!

As for the rice, well, it was certainly better than plain, white rice, but not by much. I did eat it up, however, especially since I went out of my way to take it!

As for the main dish, well, I was able to add some sesame dressing to the cabbage, so that was a plus, but the chicken was a bit disappointing. Why? Because it was mostly flavorless and chewy.

If you take a close look at it, you'll see that quite a bit of fat was left on the meat, as usual for my not-so-favorite kitchen. That fat simply has no business being there. Cut it off, folks!

The dessert was OK, but, as is typical for Japanese desserts, not very sweet. I'm almost always happy when we get dessert, but, still, I prefer sweet desserts.

I'm also not really sure why they served ohagi today, since it's usually served only twice a year, in March and September, around the time of the spring and fall equinoxes.

Also, notice how the ohagi rests on that aluminum foil "tray," yet is served on a plate. Why is it served on a plate? Ugh!

For whatever reason, today was a day of gluttony. Lunch ends at 1:00, and by then there are usually very few students left in the cafeteria. Today, however, at 1:00 there were still about 30 students eating. Why? Well, just check out some of the portions in the other pictures.

The giant bowl of rice is actually not all that unusual, but the amount of seconds that were dished out were simply ridiculous!

See that plate of chicken? That was served to a kid as second. I kid you not! Isn't that ridiculous? Sometimes, they don't even let you have seconds, but today you could have a portion that could feed five!

Another student sitting at my table was given just about as much chicken when he went for seconds, and he's the one who had the two extra desserts!

Some people tell me I eat a lot, but I cannot compete with these youngsters! The good thing is, they're Japanese. In other words, they won't get fat!

Total points: 6

p.s. Bonus points to all of you out there who can name the student in the rice picture! Who is it?