Uniforms and School Lunches

Janina in her Jr. High uniform

A Foreign Mother in Japan

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Ever since I’ve been in Japan I’ve found myself rebelling against the uniform system 98% of the country has adopted. Kids all wearing the same clothing, they all look the same already, you can’t hardly tell them apart, much less putting them in the same uniform! How can a mother find her child in the crowd, how do you know if that’s little Yuko or Sayaka on the stage reciting something?

We were lucky though, our local kindergarten and elementary school don’t require uniforms, only matching PE clothes. The kids are free to come to school in shorts, t-shirts, pants, jeans, dresses, whatever they feel like, only their shoes are restricted to tennis shoes, no sandals or boots, but that’s ok, I can ‘give’ on that point.

But---once they hit Jr. High, goodbye freedom, hello conformity! At first Janina was excited to be getting her uniform, FINALLY! A uniform! I hated it, I let her know from the start, I complained about it, it’s too hot in summer, not warm enough in winter (and they aren’t allowed to wear a coat or sweater on top of it, even if it snows!), blah blah! After 1-1/2 years wearing the same clothing day after day, Janina has finally realized that uniforms SUCK!!

This is one of the few points my husband and I disagree on about the Japanese school system—uniforms! He grew up with it, so he’s used to them, he accepts it as a better way of doing things—and to be honest, it does make life simple! No clothing choices every day, they are pretty sturdy so they don’t wear out too quickly (they should be sturdy since it usually costs about $800 to get your kid’s uniforms for the year!), and at school there’s no comparing or bad feelings about who’s dressed to style, who’s not, who’s ‘in’, who’s not (don’t worry though, those problems are still there, they just come out in different ways—who has the cool pencil case….) But for me, I love the variety of clothing, I love choosing something new to wear every day, I love color, and I think color in the classroom gives it a bit more life! Uniforms go against my love of freedom and not being bound by unnecessary rules. There’s enough rules to follow, ones that make sense, why do we need to enforce conformity?

OK, now I’ve ragged on the uniforms, I want to talk about something Japanese schools do very well—lunches!

Every school district does it a bit differently, but generally schools have a school-lunch system, meals are delivered on a daily basis, usually served with milk, once in awhile with coffee-milk or chocolate-milk. In our area, school-lunch, or kyushoku, is served to the elementary grades. It costs about $35/month, and I really like it. Every month we get the menu complete with nutrition information, we know exactly what they’re eating that day. And there really is hardly any junk, meals are very balanced with veggies, protein and starch. Kids are NOT allowed to bring soda to school, or even fruit juice unless they have a good reason, but they can bring water, or mugi-cha (barley tea), or when they’re sick I’ve often sent warm herb-tea or lemon-tea. Basically, they can’t bring anything sweet.

Something that varies from the American school system is there is no morning snack recess. I seem to remember always having a snack break around 10 or so. Here they kids stick it out till lunch time, and I guess the body adjust to it. Even now I always find myself hungry at about—yes—10 or 11, but my kids can survive all the way to 12:30 with just breakfast. And in many families, the kids don’t even eat breakfast. No wonder everyone’s so skinny over here!

As I said before, I have a true love-hate relationship with Japan—and since I was the one up and making breakfast and Janina’s lunch today, I loved the elementary kyushoku service, and wished the Jr. High had the same!