Hot Diggity Dog!

So I'm eating kyuushoku (school lunch) with the first graders yesterday, right? In classic Japanese school lunch fashion, the menu seemed to have been designed under the assumption that any foreign foods can be combined to create a meal: hot dog, potato salad and egg drop soup. At any rate, the hot dog was served cold and obviously a far cry from the world's greatest hot dogs that have made me into the snob that sits before you today.

As luck would have it, they at least saw fit to include ketchup and mustard, the latter of which is despised by most Japanese and hard to come by in restaurants. At first glance, it looked like spicy, brown deli mustard but in actuality wasn't even as flavorful or spicy as French's. Well, I'm from Chicago so I had to represent with straight mustard; I'll have none of that sugary tomato goo on my hot dog, thank you. About halfway through the hot dog, though, I noticed that everyone was staring at me (although this really isn't that rare of an occurrence). It appeared that I was the only person in the room who had dared to even try the mustard. "Mehan-Sensei," a girl across the table asked me, looking visibly concerned, "isn't it spicy?" I replied that it wasn't and I think that even by Japanese standards, this statement holds true. Well, the girl then daringly applied some mustard to her own hot dog (which was greeted with shocked gasps from around the room) and took a bite. "It's not spicy!" she declared, "It tastes like cheese." At this point, the demeanor of the room returned to normal and most kids resumed eating their hot dogs.

Spurred on by the boldness of the other girl at our table, the girl to the right of me decided to carefully apply a drop of mustard to her hot dog. I'd estimate that the circumference of the drop was no larger than that of the end of a ball-point pen. Furthermore, the taste had to have been completely lost in the slather of ketchup that she had also applied. Regardless, after taking a bite, she began to gyrate as if possessed, vaguely gesturing towards her unopened carton of milk but apparently incapacitated to the point that he hands were no longer useable appendages. Another girl had to open the milk for her which she proceeded to gulp down before slumping back in her seat and letting out an exasperated "Spicy" under her breath.

Halfway through lunch, the specially-abled child (mentioned in Monday's post), bolted out of his seat and began to run in circles around the room, screaming. Hot dog in hand, he made a large arc around the center cluster of desks, vanished out of the back door and then rocketed back in through the front door of the classroom. At the sight of this, all of the kids in class began to point and laugh at him while the teachers sat and observed the one man marathon for a few laps. He was then ushered to his seat where he finished the rest of his lunch in silence.