obento

An integral part life in Japan is obento, Japanese lunch boxes (or just bento with the o being there only for politeness). Bento is simply put a proper meal with rice or noodles and fish or meat and vegetables and other Japanese foody necessities, all packaged in a box. Bento lunch boxes are for many people a part of everyday life. When we were living in Tokyo I used to prepare a bento lunchbox every day for my wife in the morning while she was getting ready to go to work. In supermarkets and convenience stores busy people who did not bring their own bento can buy a bento box for lunch. There are special bento-stores selling lunch to business people, ekiben (short for train station obento) is a popular form of bento you buy at the station before boarding a train, and when people are doing family outings or cherry blossom viewing picnics they often bring obento. And of course children often are asked to bring bento to their kindergarten or school.

When you buy a bento box you mostly get a simple plastic or cardboard container, but when making bento at home there is a whole art to bento-making. There are beautiful lacquerware boxes, aluminum containers, children’s character themed boxes to name a few varieties, and the boxes are often wrapped in furoshiki, beautiful Japanese wrapping cloth. Bento boxes often have divisions or smaller compartments and you are supposed to cook delicious food and present it in the compartments in an appealing way. When making lunch boxes for children, there are also a lot of special tools that are used to put faces on the rice balls or shape the balls into police cars or popular animation characters. And Instagram is full of videos showing how to make fun lunches for the kids.

At our son’s kindergarten lunch is always obento. Four days per week the bento boxes come delivered from a children’s meals facility while one day per week it is bring-from-home-bento. While it means earlier than usual mornings for the parents to try to prepare an appetizing bento, our son is so happy when he gets to bring his own lunch box, even when we have not put too much effort into making an extravagant presentation of the food. Obento obento ureshii na (Lunch box lunch box I’m happy) he is sometimes singing. And when he comes home having finished every last grain of rice, his parents are happy as well.

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