A curious practice they do in Japan is have students serve food during lunch but I guess it isn’t so curious considering they also have to clean their classroom. To clarify, the students don’t cook the food which is actually prepared by professionals in the school’s kitchen, rather all the students do is take their allotted food, serve it to their classmates, and then later clean up and bring the tray and leftover food back to the kitchen.
Lunch is held in the classroom where it is served, eaten, and then cleared from the premises. The students who have lunch duty have to wear long sleeve aprons, a face mask, and a cap. Food are eaten with chopsticks so if you’re a foreign student, you will have to learn how to use them. As for the type of food served, I haven’t found any particular list but I’m sure it’s standard Japanese meals such as rice, a pickled vegetable, some fish, meats, miso soup, and so on.
Due to the short time at school on Saturdays, students do not have to serve lunch to each other on that day. Rather, they can just go home and eat or if they packed lunch, consume that instead. With all that said, high school students do not serve each other lunch or at least, they do not serve each other at the classroom. They have their own cafeteria where they can buy food as well as sit and eat. They are permitted to eat lunch in other areas of the school from the grounds, the classroom, or the rooftop.
