I usually take a big breakfast before coming to work. It is not really a very BIG one but at least I eat until I am full. But as always happens working boredom makes you hungry, and by 11 o’clock my stomach starts grunting (just like Japanese people when they think). But lucky for me at 11:45 it’s lunch time. You might think it’s too early but for me it is just the perfect time. You can hear a midi-type melody and then everybody gets up and heads to the canteen.

In my factory there are more than 2000 people working, so that the canteen can not hold such a crowd. The solution for this is dividing us in three groups and having different schedule. I’m in the first group and we have 45 minutes until we have to go to work again, time when the next round comes to have lunch.

The food is really good. You enter and you have a kind of display cabinet with some of the day main dishes inside. Behind those dishes there is a logo of one “restaurant” so once you have chosen the dish you take a tray and wait in the queue for the food. There are several lines from where to take the dishes (one for each “restaurant”), something like in the airports. You can take whatever you want, apart from the main dishes there are also side dishes. Every dish has a sign with its name, prize, weight and even energetic amount.

Once you have your food you head to the cutlery and drink zone. Here you take your chopsticks (or fork and knife for the clumsy gai-jins) and your glass (I always take 2 glasses because I hate having to get up to refill it). There’s free hot and cold green tea to drink, as everywhere.

Then you take a place with your colleges and start eating. By the time I sit my friend Nan has almost finished his meal. He is a Chinese eating machine, really fast with the chopsticks (now I understand why in Chinese restaurants they serve you so quickly). I usually sit with my trainee friends and other good English speaking colleges. It is supposed that you can sit wherever you want but everybody has his common place. It’s like at school!

A curious thing is that even if there are female workers (a quarter of the workers I would say), they don’t mix with the guys. You can perfectly see the distinction and the female grouping. Sometimes I feel I am watching an animal documentary. This is something really weird and the reason they gave me is that Japanese guys are very shy…

Once you have finished (or more accurately, once Gerardo the slow Mexican guy has finished) you take your tray and head out. To pay you put your tray in some special table where there is a machine that detects which dishes you have taken and tells you how much you should pay. Then you insert your prepaid card and the prize is discounted. And that’s it. I always eat a lot and never pay more than 700 yen (about 4.3 euros). 

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