Jul 20

WIT Life #45: 便所飯

Article/Journalism, Japan Trends, Translating/Interpreting, WIT Life Add Comment (1)

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter/Translator/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).  Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.

Today’s news reported on an interesting trend in Japan, that of 便所飯 (benjo meshi) or toilet meals.  The segment focused on college students who don’t want to be seen eating alone, and choose to take cover in the bathroom instead.  The news crew went into a university to determine the extent of this phenomenon, and did a survey of  how many people were found eating alone in the cafeteria within an hour, yielding 11.  They interviewed these solo eaters as to why they were by themselves, and one replied that the time she had available to eat didn’t match that of her friends.

Other people who spoke to reporters said that they would rather skip lunch and wait until a later meal when their friends were free rather than face eating alone.  However, for some it is eating with others that is a source of stress.  Said one young man, “When I am with people, I feel like I have to entertain them and I worry about what will happen if we fall into silence.  Because of this I become nervous.”  Others avoid eating alone at all costs by employing tactics such as calling everyone they know to see if they are free, or taking their lunch to the study room and pretending that they are busy doing homework while they eat.  They all clarified that eating alone off campus was not an issue; it is potentially being seen at school by those they know that is a concern.

An experiment was carried out with four young men who normally ate with friends, having them try eating alone and report back how they felt.  No one in the group was able to simply eat.  One read a magazine, one fiddled with his keitai, all focusing on anything but the room around them.  They all finished their meals in less than 10 minutes, almost twice as fast as they usually ate.  They were universally conscious of people looking at them and they disliked this feeling, a sentiment of  “I hated people thinking that I didn’t have any friends.” 

Interestingly enough, universities throughout Japan have signs posted on the back of bathroom doors warning against eating in the stalls. The one here on the right was at Keio University and reads, “Let’s use the toilet correctly” and on the bottom details forbidden actions such as smoking, graffiti and eating.  This poster is actually from 2007, so although benjo meshi is receiving recent attention, it seems to have existed as a phenomenon for a while.  University administrations were not aware of such signs, so it is unclear as to whether they are being posted as a joke by students.

In researching benjo meshi on the Internet, I was surprised to find that there is a Wikipedia entry devoted to this subject.  Evidently it is also an extreme sport with self-scoring, and is said to be favored by women.  The key is not being seen by others, and in the non-competitive world some privacy-seeking salarymen are also found to take refuge in the toilet to eat their lunches.  This is reminiscent of hikikomori (reclusive individuals), and other locations for clandestine eating are lockers holding cleaning supplies (ロッカー飯 or rokka- meshi), stairs leading up to the roof (階段飯 or kaidan meshi), and dark places such as a grove of trees (暗がり飯 or kurogari meshi).

Incidentally, in Aichi Prefecture’s Inazawa City there is a tradition called 便所開き (benjo hiraki), referring to a christening of sorts of the bathroom.  According to this custom, at the time of a house’s new construction or renovation, before the bathroom can be used friends and acquaintances are invited to come and drink tea and enjoy Japanese sweets in its premises.  Surely in Inazawa this is an important reason to keep the floors so clean you can eat off of them!