company bento and Kamidana?????

With the move to our new office, there have been a number of changes.

The first of which I'll talk about here, is the company bento. It's hard to believe sometimes, but someone somewhere makes a bento for every single person in the HQ of this company. To be honest, really, if we all had to go out en masse for lunch, I think it would be total chaos, not to mention expensive, and also impossible really with the 45 minutes of alotted time between 12:00 and 12:45.

There used to be 2 types of bentos avaliable. One that was meat heavy (read 'for the guys') and One that was usually fish-based (read 'for the ladies'). This is one of the main reasons I've had to be lenient about being vegetarian; if I have to choose between pork and chicken, then I'm just going to have to go with the chicken. This isn't an airline flight where someone wisks a special meal in before everyone else eats their chicken or beef.

Fortunately, we've got 3 kinds now, and the third is usually vegetarianish and also usually pretty good. I lot of chahan and udon, which is fine with me.

In a more bizarre vein, I came into the office on monday to see a Kamidana above the television in our department. Now, the Number Two in the department had been telling us for a long time they were going to change the doors to the interview rooms in our department (paper thin walls let you hear what's going on on either side, which is a security issue). No one said anything about a kamidana.

I'm still not sure why it's there. I mean, this is something people usually have in their home. None of the other places I've worked have had anything like this, and even at our old location we didn't either. Responses when I've told people has ranged from 'kind of weird' to 'dasai, jijippoi' to 'well fancy that!'

I think it's interesting, and might even be a comment on the status of shintoism as a religion or maybe even how religion is viewed on a generic level by society here.