I would like to mention about the trial of food culture in Japanese school lunch focusing food environment and the dishes.Splendid lunchrooms have been appeared in great numbers since 1975, and they amounted to 9339 schools, 28% of total schools that enforced school lunch, research of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2000.I will introduce some unique schools of them. At Satosyonishi elementary school in Okayama Prefecture, there are stained glass, looks like a belt, on the center of the ceiling of the lunchroom, at Todoroku elementary school in Tochigi Prefecture, the lunchroom looks like a cottage that was made from logs of cedars, at Kiso elementary school in Nagano Prefecture, all of the interior of the lunchroom are made of Hinoki, Japanese cypress, and at Bisei elementary school in Okayama Prefecture has two lunchrooms, one is for the exclusive of the lower classes, the other is for the exclusive of the upper classes. The lunchroom of lower classes is European style has a star that is symbol of town chandelier. The lunchroom of upper classes is a Japanese-style room with Tatami and so on.Such are too numerous to mention. It is said that children shout for joy at new lunchrooms, and after taht they, as a rule, have better matters. It is said that good environment makes a good man, so that the food environment occupies important position in food culture beyond measure.And about the dishes for school lunch had begun to be developed in the place of production of timber or chinaware since about 1975. About the chinaware, Aritayaki (a kind of pottery) from Arita Town, Minoyaki from Toki City or Tajimi Town and Hasamiyaki from Hasami Town. The place of wood-working are Ohno Villege (where everyone is a master of an art, and is famous for Ohno Craft) in Iwate Prefecture, Oketo Town, in Hokkaido, Shogawa Town in Toyama Prefecture, Kawakami Villege (Masanami dishes which is made from Japanese cedar) and so on. Manufacturer of chinaware which was big corporation developed dishes for school lunch. So chinaware dishes had come into wide use that was the third rank of the most used dishes, next to plastic dishes and outstripped aluminous dishes, and they had come into use 6876 schools in Japan, according to the research of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2000.Recently schools have increased in which they use lacquered, called Shikki, for bowl of soup. For example Wajimanuri of Ishikawa Prefecture, Aizukitakatanuri of Fukushima Prefecture and so on.In traditional Japanese food life, we have used soup bowl what we call Shiruwan formiso soup or osuimono (Japanese soup) for long time. And it has still been handed down by tradition. It is important to use Shiruwan for school lunch also in order to hand down Japanese food culture to children.We'd like to expect that such a trial of food culture will come into wide by school lunch.
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