ormally one starts a meal by saying, " Iradokimasu" (I gratefully partake), but another thing that was different at Tomoe Gakuen was that first of all everybody sang a song. The headmaster was a musician and he had made up a special "Song to Sing before Lunch." Actually, he just made up the words and set them to the tune of the well-known round "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." The words the headmaster made up went like this:

It wasn't until they had finished singing this song that the children all said " ltadakimasu."

The words fitted the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" so well that even years later many of the pupils firmly believed it had always been a song you sang before eating.

The headmaster may have made up the song because he had lost some of his teeth, but he was always telling the children to ear slowly and take plenty of time over meals while enjoying pleasant conversation, so it is more likely he made up this song to remind them of that.

After they had sung the song at the tops of their voices, the children all said "Itadakimasu" and settled down to "something from the ocean and something from the hills."

For a while the Assembly Hall was quiet.