Example CustomerHoshi no Mori Daycare

Just before lunchtime at the daycare's kitchen. The glass door facing the hall is opened, and little cooks in aprons with colorful bandanas tied around their heads are making carrot cake at the counter. Children pour the orange-colored batter into round molds with the help of a registered dietitian and cooking staff, who they call “lunch teachers.” You can hear them say things like, “Isn't this fun? It's like a takoyaki party,” “Look, the dough is starting to rise,” and “Oh, it smells great!”
If the little cooks say things like “It looks delicious!” you might hear a lunch teacher say, “Why don't we eat it during snack time? But before that, make sure to properly eat all of your lunch.” This is an example of what happens during the daycare cooking classes held in the open kitchen of the Hoshi no Mori Daycare in Tamura City, Fukushima Prefecture.

Hoshi no Mori Daycare is a privately operated daycare run by the Hoshi General Hospital Foundation in Fukushima Prefecture, which manages and operates general hospitals, health nursing schools, geriatric healthcare facilities, daycares, and daycare centers. The Foundation took over the daycare, which had been outsourced to operate by Tamura City, as a private facility and reopened it in a new location and building in April 2022. The daycare cares for 150 children aged 0 to 5, who have a great time there.

Its educational policy is “childcare through the five senses,” and the other four facilities managed and operated by the Foundation also place special emphasis on food education. At the recently opened Hoshi no Mori Daycare, the kitchen is ideally located across from the hall in the center of the building, which has a total floor area of 1,241.95 square meters. It has an open kitchen design, and the sliding door that separates the hall from the kitchen is finished with a warm wood frame and heat-resistant tempered glass. The kitchen floor is 40 cm lower than the hall and corridor where the children conduct their activities, allowing children and adults standing in the kitchen to communicate at the same eye level during cooking class and during the lunch distribution mentioned near the beginning of this article.

A catwalk with peepholes in the floor has also been constructed near the kitchen ceiling. This allows the children to play while watching lunch and snacks being prepared from their classroom or even from directly above the kitchen.

“Food is something to be enjoyed,” says Masatoshi Sato, Director of the Corporate Children's Division, “We want children to experience the joy of food through a variety of experiences, and the open kitchen is an important setting for realizing this.” He continues, “When we see school lunches being prepared, the delicious smells waft through the classrooms and hall. The smells make kids imagine the menu, and they can't wait to eat it. That process itself is a food-related experience that should enhance enjoyment and deliciousness.”

Akiko Tomatsu (Manager, Shoku Full Creation Section, Corporate Headquarters Planning Department) collaborated with Director Sato and other staff to create the kitchen concept, which gave shape to the ideas of Hoshi Hokuto (President of the Foundation, which is the parent organization of Hoshi no Mori Daycare), who always says, “Food is something to be enjoyed.” She explains, “We wanted to recreate the atmosphere of a parent standing in the kitchen at home. Children are less likely to neglect proper eating when they see the person preparing the food, which promotes better health for themselves. We hope that this facility will serve as a gateway for kids to naturally experience food in a variety of ways.”

Fujimak handled the design and construction of the kitchen at Hoshi no Mori Daycare. Section Manager Tomatsu says, “We have a long relationship with Fujimak. We have complete confidence in Fujimak's service staff because, no matter what we tell them, they come up with ideas that reflect the Foundation's philosophy. This project also demonstrates their ability to give shape to the ideas we express to them about the kitchen.”

Director Sato adds, “We want kids to have a genuine experience, not a simulated experience. When it comes to school lunches, one of the absolute musts is that they should be delicious. To prepare delicious food for 100 or 200 people at once, we need to use real equipment with sufficient heat and strong reliability. That's why we asked Fujimak to help us.” He also revealed, “The parents gave positive responses about the kitchen that we even held a tasting event for them because they said, 'they want to eat the school lunches made here'”.

Looking fondly at the children eating school lunch in the hall, Director Sato says, “When the community people shared the local vegetables for lunches, if we tell them, 'today's tomatoes were grown by X's grandfather', that child is sure to be proud of themselves. The kids will also be more interested in those tomatoes. We want to strengthen our relationship with the local community through food, and we want the daycare to be seen as 'Oraga (the town's) daycare'.”
We can expect this “designed for food education” daycare center to remain a vital presence in Tamura City as a hub for food circulation that connects daycare children, families, and the community.