Japan’s state-run kyushoku system combines flavour with fresh ingredients and high nutritional value at low cost
Japan’s state-run kyushoku system combines flavour with fresh ingredients and high nutritional value at low cost
The list of dishes reads like a health-conscious menu at an upmarket cafe: mackerel cooked in miso, a light salad of daikon radish and sour plum, thinly sliced pickled vegetables and a selection of fresh fruit. But the “restaurant” is actually a classroom at Konan primary school in central Japan, where the pupils need only the gentlest encouragement to eat their greens. When the Guardian visited the school in the Pacific coastal city of Fukuroi, the classroom, momentarily transformed into a lunchtime cafeteria, reverberated to a chorus of “Itadakimasu” – a polite Japanese term for “let’s eat”.
