A bento is a one-person meal - a take-away meal - that could be considered homemade, if your mamma ever made you meals like these.
With rice always a staple (no pun intended - maybe just a little), a typical bento box has some meat and veggies in it.
But... what I found particularly striking in these photos, is that this (what appears to be an expensive) meal is available at your local grocer - in Japan.
They are strikingly beautiful. While the meal inside is always healthy, what is key is the way the Japanese arrange the products, taking great care to ensure that no only is the food tasty to the tongue, but tasty to the eyes.
This is photo above is the cover of the bento box. But the image below - that's the meal.
Granted I never, ever ate a bento meal that looked like this - packed with so many goodies - but despite it being atypical, it does show a wonderful looking meal I would be happy to eat... well, now. I'm hungry and it's midnight as I write this. I see a sea shell stuffed with something - probably a seafood... they wouldn't really have a shellfish in there would they?
Dammit! I had kani (crab) sushi as a snack with my son earlier this evening, and had unagi (eel) sushi and salmon sushi for lunch. I think I eat more Japanese food now than I did in Japan. No... that's a lie. I ate mostly Japanese food, but did cook my own lasagne (from scratch) and chilli con carne (from scratch).
The bentos boxes - at least the ones I saw people bring from home, were usually made of hand-crafted lacquerware, while the ones I usually picked up at a train station where a formed solid paper or plastic tray.
Typically, every bento box I ever ate came with a bed of white rice with a nice round red pickled umeboshi plum sitting in the middle to represent the Japanese flag.
Personally, I am unsure how consuming one's national flag is patriotic, but it's a Japanese tradition. Sadly, the bento box here does not follow the tradition, but I get the feeling this is one high-class meal regardless.
While millions of Japanese buy a bento box daily (and us gaijin - foreigners - too), you can see from the outer box cover just above, that THIS bento box is a work of art.
I really like how they have modernized the bento box - taking a tradition - a lunch box, if you will - that has been a part of Japanese society for 700 years, and brought it into the present... at least on the outside. The bento box itself, however - pure old-fashioned Japanese style.
It's a harmonious balance of old and new - that is pleasing to the eyes and to the mouth.
Yes, I said that already - I just reversed the order to make a point. Get off my back.
Cheers
Andrew Joseph
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