LEOJL Productions Brings You: School Lunch

Let's talk about soft-men day. Soft-men literally means 'soft noodle,'
which only adds another dimension of funny to the original
just-begging-to-be-made English pun. Now, I am one of that rare breed of ALT who
actually thinks Japanese school lunches taste better and have a
consistently higher quality than their western counterparts. Still, Japanese
school lunch does have its share of foul dishes, and while soft-men is
far from the most disgusting (that honor being reserved for Squid Body
day), it disappoints precisely because it manages to be so inoffensively
bad.

Soft-men are vaguely sticky, eighteen inch-long cold noodles the width
of a power cord, the tacky consistency of the glue that clogs the tip
of the Elmer's bottle, and the flavor of raw bread dough. They come in
a clear bag that's roughly the size of snack pack of potato chips. One
is meant to take them out of the bag and dump them into a bowl of soup
and then eat them. The 'soup' in question is usually spaghetti meat
sauce (I kid you not), but curry and even broccoli cream soups have also
been known to make an appearance on soft-men day.

So anyway, dump the noodles onto the soup/curry/spaghetti sauce and eat
them, right? Couldn't be simpler. Well, it isn't that simple. For
starters, the soup (sauce/curry/whatever it happens to be) is ladled to
the very lip of the bowl, so by adding the noodles, one must magically
fill the bowl to twice its capacity without making a mess. Furthermore,
the soup/sauce/curry is thick to begin with, and since it's served an
hour before lunch begins, it's had about forty minutes to develop an
impenetrable cold soup skin which prevents the noodles from settling.

And ah, the noodles. As I've previously mentioned, they're eighteen
inches long, sticky, and vacuum-crammed into a tiny little plastic pouch.
Thus, they leave the bag in a badly tangled block. The soup bowls are
of course round, and as one only has chopsticks with which to
manipulate the noodles (and keep in mind that it's rude to let the
noodles touch anything but the interior of the bowl, it's rude to string them
out high above the bowl, it's rude to use your fingers or chopsticks
held with two hands to manipulate your food, it's rude to make a
splattery mess while dishing noodles into the bow, it's rude to...), this is
easier said than done.

Usually what happens is that one just gives up halfway and upends the
tangled cold sticky noodle block over the top of the bowl, then picks
desolately at it until a few random pieces come loose. As there's no way
to mix the cold, sticky, tangled noodles into the cold, leathery,
thickened soup/sauce/curry, one usually eats a large block of cold, sticky
raw bread dough noodles and then, if one doesn't tire of the whole
business, gets to eat the cold and leathery but mildly flavorful
soup/sauce/curry underneath. Due to the fact that in order not to hold up the
line, one must quickly separate any uneaten food by type when returning
one's meal tray to the serving cart, thus necessitating that one separate
the half-submerged cold, tangled, sticky vacuum-block of noodles from
the cold, gooey was-once- soup/sauce/curry mess in the bowl, there is a
fair amount of motivation to actually eat everything.

Of course eating it poses another problem - have you ever tried
eating a tangled block of eighteen inch long, cold, sticky,
tacky-old-glue bread dough noodles partially submerged in a cold, leathery soup
with a pair of chopsticks? It's not that easy to do without making the
sort mess two-year-olds drool of. Further complicating things is the
fact that school lunch is eaten at one's desk in the staff room, which
means that there are all manner of unmarked tests and essays lying about
just begging to be fouled by cold, sticky, leathery soup drops, and fate is usually only too happy to oblige them.

Of course, I'm incredibly stubborn about eating every last slurp on
soft-men day, because by Jove, I'm paying $6.00 to eat this crap. And
anyway, teachers are obligated to eat everything that appears on their
school lunch trays in order to set a good example for the students. That
said, I noticed a bunch of teachers getting up and slinking toward the
common table in the staff room. Curious as to what might be taking
place over there, I strolled over to have a look for myself. And to my
surprise and delight, what were these teachers doing if not discretely
depositing their bags of cold, vacuum-packed, tangled-block glue noodles
on the counter next to the tea heaters. Busted!

Course, I can't really talk, since I always make it a point to ensure that some lucky teacher gets an extra helping on Squid Body day.

That will be all.