Yay for fried whale.
Today I got to school and the office manager came up to me and asked if I was planning to eat lunch with the children. Since the one time I did NOT plan to eat lunch with them was met with nonstop protests, telling me they had already paid for my food, the children would shed tears of bitter disappointment, etc, I merely looked at him and said "Um.. yes? Am I.. not supposed to?"
He gave me a nervous look and said "I mean, of course, if you want to, it's fine, it's just.. today's lunch.. ano.. kujira." Kujira, of course, being whale. I had read in the paper that in order to find someone to buy all the whale that Japan takes in for "scientific research" Wakayama makes it the compulsory school lunch some days, and today was my lucky day.
Let me tell you something: whale, at least as prepared by school cafeterias, is about as attractive as rancid beef. The kids all stared at me as I tried it, and promptly took a giant mouthful of rice and gulp of milk to get the taste to go away. The soup was also the usual sludge of overcooked tofu, carrots, onions, eggs, and mystery broth, but at least it didn't taste like whale. ~_~
I held out the bowl and said "Who wants some extra whale, kids?" and promptly 2 kids in the group dived in, and a third ate my umeboshi (pickled Japanese apricot) for me. XD Another kid happily shoveled down all the whale, but stared at her plum sadly and told me that she despises umeboshi, which are very sour and salty, but the rule is that you must finish all of your lunch or sit there all of recess until you eat it, sobbing or otherwise. The best is when they serve any kind of eggplant - so many kids hate it, the room is filled with groans (including my groans as I see kids doing stuff like shoving the eggplant chunks into their bottle of milk and sucking it down before they can taste it @_@), which I find amusing, as they actually cook the eggplant really well. Ah, Japan.
Edited to add: Our last night in Wakayama we spent with an old man who was a friend of my husband, and he took us to a snack (a little bar) run by another old man. He asked us the obligatory questions about our time in Japan and what foods we did and didn't like, but he was actually very interesting as he chatted and told stories. He said that in fairness (if one can call it that), that the most delicious part of a whale is the tail, but that since it's so small compared to the rest of the body, it's the most expensive part. I'm not so sure about that - we went to a wedding with a Chinese-style banquet that included shark fin soup, and that also looked pretty meh to me, although my husband liked the taste.
I can't really work up the power to rant about the Japanese whaling industry, although I certainly feel it's a bit ridiculous to fight so hard to save it. Having been to Taiji, the town that's (in)famous for whaling, it seems that the real issue is that whaling is mainly happening in places where little to no other industry than fishing exists, and due to population loss and being in the sticks, it's highly unlikely that other economic opportunities will ever turn up there. At any rate, until I manage to fully convert my family to eating only sustainable, grass-fed and finished local meats, I feel that I'd be a hypocrite to say anything more.