Hygiene course

When we built our cottage in 2006 I put in a kitchen which I had visions of eventually using for a business.  Seven years later things are slowly starting to head in a direction where this may be possible.  The first step was for me to attend a food safety and hygiene course.  It was yet another insight into some of the crazy ways things are run here in Japan.... or perhaps just in our part of Japan.

The course itself was in a cold room and was from 9am to 4:30pm, with a one hour break for lunch.  All the seats were allocated depending on when you applied for the course and I was lucky (?) enough to sit next to a very talkative lady.  She never introduced herself, but immediately asked what I was doing for lunch and whether I would like to go somewhere with her.  I couldn't exactly say no, and soon discovered that she had an ulterior motive... she couldn't drive and the course was run at a place that wasn't close to any food joints so she was actually asking if I could be her taxi.  In the end I said that we wouldn't have time to go to a restaurant, but that I could take her to a convenience store if that was helpful.  Of course she jumped at the ride and I got a free coffee for my trouble.

The course itself was incredibly long and for the most part very boring.  There were different speakers for each section of the course, but none of them watched the others presentations so they generally repeated each other and generally showed all the same slides.  There was no test or any practical aspect to the course so more than half of the participants used the opportunity to take a nap at some stage during the day.  Of course I was very diligent and even took notes during the lectures - of all the things I thought were a little "different".  Some of my highlights were:

• The first man talked for 30 minutes about something and then proceeded to say that he would talk about it in detail later.... and then proceeded to say that nothing he had said so far actually applied to any of us anyway.....
• The second man asked if filleting blow fish was a part of any of our jobs and when we all said no he proceeded to talk for 10 minutes about it and then said.. but this doesn't apply to any of you.
• The third man covered 15 pages of the manual in 2 minutes and then just told us to read it ourselves.  He apologised for finishing his section 4 minutes later than his allocated time....
• The fourth man had the task of talking at us after lunch and started by saying "please just pretend that you are awake".  Not many took his advice.... 
• The last man could see how pointless the whole day was and spent more time saying "you don't have to listen to this, but I have to say it" than anything else.  His favorite line was "I'm not a specialist in this area, so if you actually want to know anything you should contact a specialist".

At the end we were all presented with a certificate and told that we now have a fantastic qualification that we can use all over Japan.  It makes me wonder about how valid most of the qualifications here are.....

Next step health inspectors visit....