Japanese School Lunch "Mystery Meat"

In my long years as an elementary and middle school student eating American school lunch, there were many days when my classmates and I would poke the brownish and somewhat tasteless blobs on our plastic trays with a fork, speculating on their origins. I think an official monthly school lunch menu went home to our parents, stuffed in backpacks between the corrected math worksheets and penmanship practice pages, but after receiving it none of us thought of it again. Of course, it being America and all, there weren't that many options for where our mystery meat had come from-- beef, pork, or chicken? Fish was rare and always came in the form of recognizable breaded fish sticks.

I've eaten Japanese school lunch every day it's been available for 2 1/2 years, and there are many differences. In my small schools, the students generally eat in their classrooms; the food is made at a separate location and dropped off in latched metal containers. After dishing out the food, a student reads off the lunch menu posted in the classroom, just so everyone knows what they're about to dig their chopsticks into. Not only do we know what we're getting, there's a lot more variety of what I would've liked to call "mystery meat" (except thanks to the reader and the posted menu, there are no mysteries). Squid and octopus make regular appearances in stiry-fries, which is perhaps not surprising because my island is known for its delicious squid. I can almost count on a slab of baked or fried fish once a week and tofu incorporated into soup or a side dish 2-3 times/week. There's a fair share of chicken and pork, too, although beef is rather rare due to its relatively high cost. I got something new on my plate today, though.

Apparently Nagasaki Prefecture decided that this week would be "Cultural Foods Week," or something like that, with its school menu planners trying to include as many local/Nagasaki-grown foods as possible. Since Tsushima is technically part of Nagasaki, that included us.

I'm having difficulty in framing this story... I would like to express here my sincere regret that I ate said non-mystery meat item. And that my other prospective blog title was, "I Might've Eaten An Endangered Species Today."

When I first saw the precisely-cut bite-sized blocks of meat covered in miso-sesame sauce, I thought they were beef. And then someone said, "Oh yes. That's whale."

I was quite surprised, of course, even though I know that Nagasaki has a long history of whaling, and the Japanese taste for whale is still strong. Japanese marine "science teams" manage to come back with dead whales that they say are for research purposes and then later end up on the whale market. You can order whale at a bunch of upscale Japanese-style restaurants in Nagasaki city. It's so prohibitively expensive, though, I never thought I'd see it in Tsushima, especially not on my school lunch tray.

After an initial shocked silence, I asked what kind of whale it was. The school lunch planner/food orderer, who sits across from me, frowned and then admitted that she didn't know. It was simply "whale."

Knowing that the blobs on my plate might well be an endangered species, then, I felt even more wary of trying it. I could've said no. I probably should have (at least then I wouldn't have this post-meal guilt, to say nothing of the ethical concerns). There are a couple reasons why I didn't. First, there's an incredibly pressure in Japan to eat everything you're given for school lunch, even if it makes you gag. Unlike my American cafeteria where the end of lunch saw an industrial-sized garbage bag half-full with refuse (all those vegetables and lima beans we never wanted to eat), Japanese school kids generally aren't allowed to put any food back or throw it away. I've seen kids holding their noses trying to gag some of the stuff down, but gag it down they do. And there are constant speeches about "suki/kirai shinai," or "don't have/express likes or dislikes" for food. I think the point is that everything has a different kind of nutritional value and indeed, school lunches are planned out to excessive detail; you can look at the monthly menu and see exactly how many grams of protein are on your tray.

I have put my foot down a couple of times; I always refuse liver because the first time I tried it, I almost vomited. The 3rd-grade middle school students sitting near me at the time even edged their seats away. So no more liver.

Also, after arriving in the classroom I was scheduled to eat in, I could see that my students were eager to have whale. One student was absent today, and the others were janken (rock-paper-scissors) -battling to see who would get her share of whale. And it did look tasty, covered in miso-sesame sauce.

So rather than give my portion to my students, who would've been more than happy to devour it, I tried it. And I hope writing about the experience will alieviate at least some of my guilt. (did I mention that in my own cooking, I'm mostly vegetarian?) For the record: if I hadn't been told it was whale, my guess for the mystery meat would've been rather dry beef. After trying the first bite, I wondered if the school lunch planner was just pulling my leg. And then, why anyone would kill a whale to eat something so similar to beef.

It comes down to culture, I think: the Japanese have a history of whaling (and unlike America, they never stopped hunting whales, although now it is under the guise of scientific research... I wonder if Americans would've stopped if we'd been an island-nation), whereas beef is an import from the western powers that conquered them. Even if the two meats have a similar taste and consistency, it seems to be important for them to occasionally consume the product that makes them feel Japanese, the one that their ancestors consumed.

Where does that leave me with the brown blobs of potentially endangered species on my school lunch tray? Still guilty. Still looking for excuses to not saying no (it's not like I --ordered-- whale, and my consuming or not consuming it wouldn't have altered the whale market)... but, perhaps, also partaking in a cultural experience?