I started a job a few months ago. My first job in Japan. My first Japanese job. The cultural differences I encountered in daily life before were minuscule compared to the stark cultural differences (both good and bad) I've encountered working in a Japanese office. But I'm going save that for another post, because there are just too many. This post is dedicated to the amazing lunches my office cafeteria serves. My employer subsidizes both food and drink, so a standard lunch is only $5 USD.
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| 500 yen; grilled fish, clam rice, fried chicken, simmered veggies, croquette, and pickles. |
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| 400 yen: air-fried chicken rice bowl with carrot salad, eggplant, broccoli, and grated daikon topping. |
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500 yen: Spicy fried chicken, multigrain rice, curry shrimp potato salad, simmered greens, and cabbage salad.
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500 yen: peppery steamed fish, multigrain rice, meat cabbage rolls, macaroni salad, and spicy cucumber and beansprout salad.
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| 300 yen: arrabbiata pasta. |
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| 500 yen: pickled daikon, rice with nori, hardboiled egg marinated in soy sauce, grilled salmon, croquette, shrimp fry, port cutlet, and pickled ginger. |
500 yen: grilled fish, multigrain rice, miso tofu, ratatouille-ish veggies, and spinach egg salad.
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| 500 yen: Pickled daikon, rice with umeboshi, potato salad, and Chinese-style (Japanese-style Chinese food) shrimp and veggie stir fry. |
It's amazing, isn't it? I used to work in downtown Chicago, where there was plenty of good food, but not much under $10 USD and most over $12. And my workplace had neither a cafeteria nor a subsidized lunch. The subsidized lunch is quite common in Japan, though. I think my office may offer a wider variety than most. We have 5-6 hot lunches and 5-6 bentos to choose from, in addition to daily sides such as salads, fruits, yogurt, etc. While the lunches are made on-site, the bentos are delivered from a third-party caterer/restaurant. The one downside is all the single-use plastic, the constant and terrible byproduct of eating out.
A few months in, I still get excited at 11am when the daily bentos come out. As an American, will I ever get used to this? Probably not.
