Today was my school's end of year party (plus the principal's birthday, the nutritionist's congratulations for her baby, and my welcome party). Even though there were no classes and generally nothing for me to do, I still went to work for the full day since I wasn't about to miss the end of year party or use my time off when I have to be there for a couple hours anyway. Ended up just studying Japanese the whole time the party wasn't happening, but that's for another blog post.
Something to note about me is that I am allergic to gluten. Also, something to note is gluten is in almost everything in Japan. Like literally broth, potato chips, and most notably soy sauce contains gluten (not to mention that white miso and the tea served all summer contain barley). Generally, Japan is not a good place for people with food allergies. Changing orders at restaurants isn't really possible and it's can be hard to explain just how many things gluten can be hiding in. However, for our parties the Japanese teacher (well they are all Japanese teachers, but the one that teaches the Japanese language) makes food for everyone. In my first couple weeks working he asked me about all the things I'm allergic to and apparently since the last party purchased gluten free soy sauce and made the ENTIRE meal gluten free. Like seriously a feast of gluten free Japanese food. It was incredible.
I filled one large plate, a small plate, a bowl of miso soup, and a rice bowl. There was stewed daikon, cucumber salad, potato salad, pork belly, homemade furikake, some leafy green that looks like spinach but isn't, some dish with mushrooms but honestly no idea what it was, miso soup, plus more. Being able to eat everything at a party is nearly unheard of for people with allergies, let alone in not allergy aware Japan. They even got a gluten free cake for me, which I didn't know was a thing in Japan.
I've been told that a big part of Japanese culture is inclusion. This is the positive side of an often negative homogeneous trend of the culture. There is no denying I'm different: I'm the one westerner in a 40km(25mile) radius, speaking the language is a daily struggle, I make bentos every day because I can't eat school lunch like everyone else, but for food at the party I was the same as everyone else. I was invited, included, and treated pretty much the same as everyone else. This does mean I was asked to give a speech, which was a struggle in Japanese (I only said two sentences XD), but a small price to pay for feeling more included than I felt at almost all parties I went to in the US.
On the west coast where I lived in the US, people have fairly good knowledge about allergies and there are many options for gluten free people. However, at parties, it was still usually the case that you can only eat a few of the things available (I've been to a lot of potlucks where the only things I didn't bring that I can eat are chips and fruit) or there was a separate version of a few dishes for you. A tiny school in rural Japan is the last place I would expect to be able to eat all the food at a party. And yet, that's exactly what happened.
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