- I'm not gonna like
I think that it's time for American to step its game up.
What's going on?
(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm David and I'm representing America.
- Hi, I'm Hinano and I'm representing Japan.
- Hi, I'm Blake and I'm American.
- Hi, I'm Miho, I'm from Japan.
- And today we're gonna swap school lunches.
- My school lunches in Japan, they're called Kyushoku.
- I loved it.
It was pretty good.
- School lunches as I remember
I mean I probably wouldn't like them as much now
as I did back then.
- I would just eat like four burgers everyday,
or like eight slices of pizza.
- We had this thing when I was really young
called a cheese zombie, which was just like
two giants pieces of bread
and a bunch of like melted American cheese.
- Oh yeah, I mean I liked it.
I liked it.
- We had this thing called UFO
which was literally a giant gyoza
that was shaped like a UFO
and it had meat and vegetables inside.
- That sounds way better.
- My favorite was agepa, we say, it's a bread
it's fried, tons of sugar, it's good.
- Our food has a lot of sugar in it too.
- Well maybe it's less sugar.
- Less sugar?
- I believe so.
It's probably healthier.
- I would like to see the stats on this.
- Ready to swap lunches?
- Let's do it.
- All right, let's do it.
- Oh this is the American lunch.
- What?
No, we gotta swap now.
This is crazy.
- Oh yours looks way better.
Is that salmon?
That looks fantastic.
- Is that miso soup?
Oh that's crazy.
In a school lunch?
I would be excited to go to school.
- So we have carrots and ranch,
which I think that's pretty standard.
The green beans is also pretty standard.
- Apple slices, we don't necessarily
get healthcare in the US but we got apples.
- This is like a Manwich sloppy Joe.
- We got this from the freezer
probably was cooked four days ago cheeseburger.
We got the tater tots.
You usually can't mess up tater tots.
- I'm excited about the tater tots,
but I don't know what's going on with this bun situation.
- I mean it's not brioche.
- And then you got a Nesquik
because you gotta have your chocolate milk.
That's if your mom didn't give you money
to go to the vending machine and get a coke,
you know what I mean?
- So I would really like to know
what you have on that tray though.
- Rice, miso soup.
- Corn soup, it is definitely a thing in Japan.
And you can even buy it in vending machines
during the winter.
- That's crazy.
I have never seen a soup vending machine before.
- Pineapple, salmon.
- Salmon in their school lunch,
what is going on?
- Kanage, which is Japanese fried chicken.
Some hijiki, there is usually a vegetable.
- And we got milk.
- I don't know about her but I'm ready to swap,
she could take this.
- Yeah, I wanna swap.
- I didn't want to swap. (laughing)
(speaking Japanese)
(imitating Japanese)
- Salmon.
Not bad.
- Gonna go for the tater tots first.
It's still frozen.
(laughing)
- All right, I'm gonna just go burger.
- That is not a burger,
that's what's called a sloppy Joe.
The hamburger's deadbeat brother.
- Do you wanna try a bite of this space burger?
- I'm all right on the space burger.
I don't wanna take it from you,
that's you main part, I want you to be able to finish that.
- It's pretty good.
- I could eat this everyday, this is great.
- I wanted to find out what kind of meat it was.
I took a bite, I still don't know.
- It's probably beef?
I don't think we could get a turkey burger
in like the US school lunch.
- It could be a Beyond Burger.
- No, definitely not.
- You know the salad is not that bad.
It tastes better than it looks.
- Okay, it's probably the dressing.
Probably the dressing.
- So what's all in this?
So that doesn't look like a vegetable.
- This on is made by yam.
- What is this thing?
- Konnyaku.
Have you had like a boba?
- So this is gonna be like gelatin or something?
- Sort of, yeah.
- It's actually really good, they are delicious.
- It's kind of sweet, saucy.
- I'm just gonna say Japanese lunch
is kicking America's ass right now.
- What does it taste like?
- I was thinking it would be like seaweed or something.
But it tastes more like a sauteed vegetable
that I just haven't had before.
- I really haven't had these in a while.
It's so good.
- This is good hijiki, I don't even know what good is.
So now I know I got the good one
it's gonna make it taste better.
- So what you do is you dip the carrots in the ranch.
- I'm not gonna lie,
this Japanese fried chicken
might give Kentucky a run for its money.
- So see also, see how she went in with the fork.
An American's not going in with the fork.
We're going in fingers, just get in there.
- Kind of interested to see
what this corn soup is talking about.
That's good.
- Yeah, the miso soup is amazing.
It just seems like they take a lot more care.
- Right, it takes more time.
- This is like a nice light but filling lunch.
- I'm gonna have to say
I guess I was just ignorant to the fact
that Japan had amazing school lunches.
- Out of everything that I sampled
I'd say the corn soup, the hijiki
and the Japanese fried chicken was amazing.
- That was a good lunch that I would make for myself
on like a Saturday.
If I had kids I would rather them be eating that lunch.
- I still love Japanese lunch,
that was like so much dedication.
It made me so happy when I was a kid.
- I am all about the Japanese lunch.
Definitely feels like home,
although I do like tater tots.
- There you have it.
Japanese lunch with a side of tater tots,
everybody's happy.
(bright music)