The Bumblings of a Foreign Mom: Bento Version

Both of my children attend a local preschool (保育園, hoikuen) and overall, I am very pleased with the school and thankful for the service. The teachers are kind and truly seem to enjoy children. All the teachers know my children’s names and greet them at the door daily. The kids are presented with a day full of fun and stimulating activities and a well-balanced lunch, which apparently must also taste great, as my two get seconds every day. We are in a government approved preschool (認可保育園, ninka hoikuen) so that means that are fees are subsided based upon our income. We paid around 50,000 yen a month for our daughter and pay around 25,000 yen a month for our son (in our city the second child is half-off and any child after that is free).  Also, in our city, preschool/daycare/kindergarten for children aged 3 and over is free, so right now we only have to pay for our son’s fees and lunch fees of 5,500 yen a month for our daughter. Since their preschool is government approved, we feel safer trusting our children to the school, as to be government approved, the preschool needs to follow specific rules regarding licensed teachers, student to teacher ratios and safety precautions.  Finally, on a very practical note, I would not have been able to finish my degree without the preschool system, as I gave birth to my daughter in the middle of my second year of my PhD program, so I feel an immense amount of gratitude that I was not forced to abandon my dreams due to the birth of my first child. (In fact, I even considered thanking my city and daughter’s preschool in the opening of my dissertation, but my advisor said that was not necessary.)

Yet, sending my children to preschool has simultaneously cascaded me in waves of culture shock that I haven’t felt for years. Although I have been in Okinawa for over 15 years, in that time I had never dealt early age education, so it is through my children’s participation in preschool I have come face to face with situations where I am confused and at times frustrated. Why do my children’s clothes come home sopping wet every day? Why do I need to report not only the frequency of my son’s poos but also the consistency of them to the school daily? How did my son go through three outfits and four bibs in an eight-hour period? Do I really have to collect my children’s urine and bring it to school tomorrow morning in small pipettes? (The answer is yes). However, recently Bento Day has become my nemesis.

At my children’s preschool they are served a hot meal for lunch every day. It usually consists of rice, soup, a main dish, a vegetable-based side dish and a piece of fruit for dessert and my kids gobble it down.  I was told by my son’s teacher that he is currently eating 2.5 times the portion of his classmates and my daughter reports that she regularly eats seconds and thirds. However, once a month it is the parents’ (usually the mother’s) responsibility to send a packed lunch, i.e. a bento.

I have no idea why this tradition exists, but it is common among preschools.  My sister-in-law and I have commiserated about the troublesome of it (although I am very aware that I need to be thankful that it is only once a month and I do not need to send a lunch with my kids every day). We agreed that since we have to make our kids’ food for breakfast and dinner, along with lunches on the weekend, why do we randomly need to send lunch once a month? I took to the internet to see if I could learn the reasoning behind this tradition. One website suggested that it is to show children how much their parents care for them and to make them appreciate their parents (as opposed to all the other meals we make them?).  Another suggested that it improves communication between parents and children as they need to talk about what to put in the bento. A friend once told me that it is an opportunity for the child to show their favorite foods to their classmates and share more about themselves. I personally don’t know if I am sold on any of these suggestions, although I can admit that improving communication between children and parents along with giving an opportunity for children to both show appreciation to their parents and share more about themselves with their classmates are reasonable goals (but I argue there are other ways to achieve these goals). 

While I have never been a fan of bento day, my true issues with the event came about a year ago, shortly after my son was born. My daughter had bento day, and I packed what I usually pack, a sandwich, soybeans, sweet potato, mini tomatoes and whatever fruit we have in the house, along with the two packages of snacks as requested by the school. While making her sandwich I questioned whether I should make her one or two sandwiches (the bread was rather small) but I went with one sandwich, as my sleep addled brain was not making the best choices.  When I went to pick my daughter up from preschool that day, one of her teachers came to talk to me.  She told me that I should have put rice in her bento. This was the first discussion I had ever had about the contents of my daughter’s lunch even though at this point she had been attending preschool for over two years (although her first two years were at another school. This was her third month in the new school.) I explained to my daughter’s teacher that there might be some cultural differences behind my bento choices, as usually the phrase of “cultural differences” stops people from insisting I do things in a certain way. However, she continued to push. She told me that I needed to bring rice-based dishes for future bento days because they keep children fuller longer. I tried to explain to her that because I hadn’t been sleeping a lot I didn’t make a good choice in packing her bento and that I should have added another sandwich. However, she wasn’t moved. It was not a volume issue; it was a content issue. She was surprisingly strong in her stance that my daughter should have rice in her next bento and to finally end the conversation I vaguely agreed to do it in the future.

I was quite upset by this conversation. I don’t oppose rice for lunch and while it wouldn’t be my first choice to eat at lunch if I was making it, I frequently eat it for lunch at restaurants or when I just need to grab something quick from a supermarket or convenience store, so my irritation was more at being forced to prepare rice without what seemed to me, a valid reason. I talked to my husband, mother and friends about the conversation, and the general conclusion was that I should ignore what the teacher said. I even checked with my daughter, and she said she likes sandwiches, so I decided to continue making a bento with sandwiches and just make sure to put more food in it. This choice made me nervous as I am a rule follower and especially as the only foreign mom at my kids’ school, I want to fit in and not cause any problems. However, I also felt that as the mother of my children it is ultimately my choice what goes in the lunches that I make for my children. There was no rule specifically banning sandwiches and other children were eating them for lunch so why should I have to include rice in her bento?

Things were fine for a couple of months, but then one day another one of my daughter’s teachers (she had three teachers at the time) stopped me after bento day to talk to me. “Okāsan,” she started, which immediately made me nervous (as a parent, you are not called by your name at preschool and instead all women are called okāsan, mother. Most conversations that start with okāsan are not good), “you should put rice in your daughter’s bento.” I was honestly quite surprised that this situation was being introduced again. I had assumed by me ignoring the previous guidance and by nothing being said about my daughter’s lunch for a couple of months that we had concluded that we would agree to disagree. Yet here the same discussion was being raised once more. Again, I noted that there were cultural differences, and it was easier for me to make a sandwich for my daughter as opposed to onigiri (rice balls) or other rice dishes. Apparently, this was not the right thing to say as the teacher then questioned whether we eat rice in our home (I guess she forgot that I am married to a Japanese person and that rice is eaten outside of Japan) and then suggested that I buy my daughter onigiri from the convenience store (apparently rice is more important than a meal prepared at home or the homemade bread I am using to make her sandwiches). I found this quite offensive and was ready to be done with the conversation so I frankly told her that I would not be making onigiri or any other type of rice dishes for my daughter’s bento. She closed with saying that if I wasn’t going to give her rice, I should pack her bento full of food so that she has enough energy for the day.

I was quite frustrated and irritated after this conversation. Not only did I think they were overstepping their boundaries and being insensitive to cultural differences, but I also felt that way too much time was being wasted on something incredibly trivial. There are a lot of problems in the world, and I don’t think that whether my daughter has rice or bread for lunch once a month is one of them. (Just as a side note, occasionally my daughter is served bread at school lunch and bread is regularly featured in the school lunches of elementary and junior high school students throughout Japan, so eating bread at lunch is not unheard of in schools.)

I assumed that this would be the end of the situation but a couple months later, the third of my daughter’s teachers approached me about the bento situation. I am not sure if they thought I hadn’t understood our previous conversations (although I felt that I had clearly stated that I would not be making onigiri) or that having another teacher broach the subject would change my mind, but I was quite irritated by all the time being wasted on this situation. I told her, “It is only once a month, so what does it matter if she eats bread or rice?” and the teacher quickly understood that I was not happy about the consistent questioning about my daughter’s bentos. She said it was okay, and she just wanted to check with me (I am not sure if there was a general lack of communication between the teachers about their other check-ins with me) but at this point I decided it was time to formally talk to the school. I felt nervous every single time I came to pick up or drop off my daughter, worrying that they were going to rope me again into yet another conversation about her once-a-month sandwich consumption and was incredibly frustrated about how much time was being wasted on this trivial issue.

A couple of days later we scheduled a meeting with the school where two of my daughter’s teachers, the head teacher, my husband and I met to talk about the situation.  As both my husband and I teach, we really didn’t want to come across as overbearing, nuisance parents but I thought it was better to formally reach a conclusion, so I didn’t have to deal with this problem for the next six years (since my son is attending the same preschool). I ended up writing a letter, first in English and then translated into Japanese to clearly express my thoughts on the situation. In the letter, I explained that while it might not be typical for Japanese to eat a sandwich for lunch, many westerners eat them for lunch, and, in fact, I do every day and therefore it was natural for me to send a sandwich to lunch for my child. I also noted that since food is an important part of culture, by telling me that I shouldn’t send a sandwich in my child’s lunch that it felt like they are implying that my culture and ways of thinking are wrong. As my children are both American and Japanese they should be exposed to both cultures and since they get delicious Okinawan and Japanese food every day at school, bento day was a chance to introduce my daughter to her other culture and give her a chance to learn more about her American roots. I also discussed that I think the introduction to a wide variety of American, Okinawan and Japanese foods from a young age is one of the reasons that she is not a picky eater (Being a picky eater is a big deal in Japan, almost like a personality flaw). Finally, I closed my letter with the request that we be mutually respectful to each other and as long as my actions don’t negatively impact the other students or the school that small differences in my decisions, such as giving my child a sandwich instead of rice, be respected. The conversation went well, and I think was a learning experience for everyone involved. I did have a chuckle though when the head teacher asked me if I would be sending my 9-month-old son with a sandwich for lunch when he started attending the same preschool the next month. I told her, “No, in the U.S. we don’t normally give infants sandwiches.”

Honestly I am still not quite sure what the problem with my bentos were, except for the fact that they are different than the standard image of a bento in Japan, which is that of rice and side dishes. When the teachers individually talked to me they brought up the point that my daughter did not have enough food, which I felt was remedied by adding more food to her bento (to the point that she was getting more food for lunch than me!). However, at the meeting, they discussed that my daughter usually eats school lunch very quickly but on bento day she always eats slowly and is one of the last ones to finish. Although I appreciated the insight, this was kind of confusing to me. I always asked her what she wanted in her bento and she always replied with a sandwich and occasionally even helped me to make them, which I told them. I wasn’t convinced that eating a sandwich instead of onigiri was the cause of slow eating. (Later my daughter did tell me that she didn’t have the same kind of goods in her bento pack, like a fork/spoon/chopstick set and a special container to hold a wet towel that she could use to wipe her hands after she ate her bento, which apparently made her feel left out.  We got her these goods and now seems much happier about bento day in general, so I wonder if that was truly the cause of the slow eating.) After that one of the teachers mentioned that on bento day they always have bread for their afternoon snack, so she was concerned that my daughter ate bread at lunch and then bread as a snack. To me this was a throw away point based upon the fact that I have had days where I eat bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I am sure this is a fairly common experience for those living in Western countries. However, both my husband and a Japanese friend agreed that this is undesirable. Apparently it is okay to eat rice three meals a day, but bread twice in a day is a no go. Okay, I learned something new there (or at least to covertly eat my second or third serving of bread in a day!) To me, that seemed like the true reason why the teachers did not approve of my daughter’s sandwiches in her lunch.

Thankfully, after the conversation the bento issue seems to have been solved. It has been about six months now and we have had no further discussions regarding what goes in my children’s lunches. Honestly, I’m not sure if the problem has actually been resolved or they just don’t want to deal with me and any more conferences but at least I can go to the preschool without worrying about further tedious conversations regarding my children’s food. At the very least, I hope that this was a positive learning experience for all involved. For myself it was a good reminder that I will occasionally have different thoughts on the best way to raise my children when compared to their school (or even the community around us) and that I need to be mature about the situation and calmly talk to the school before it becomes an issue.  I tend to shy away from any conflict whatsoever, but in some cases it will be necessary for me to assert myself and discuss the reasons why I am doing something different from the norm in Japan. Alternatively, I hope that the school gained more of a sense of understanding of cultural differences through this experience.  Even though we live in the central area of Okinawa (Chubu), which has many international marriages and children of mixed heritage, most of the mothers are Japanese, so they are very familiar with the cultural norms and traditions of Japan and wouldn’t unknowingly do something as outrageous as repeatedly send sandwiches in their children’s bentos. However, it is foreign mothers like me, who are bumbling along trying to find a balance between meeting Japanese expectations and their own cultural background, who disrupt the unwritten rules of Japanese society. I hope our conversation helped broaden cultural awareness in the school and made a place where in the future some small differences are allowed in peripheral matters.