Just Bento

Welcome to Just Bento!

Just Bento is owned and published by me, Makiko Itoh. I am a Japanese woman, born in Tokyo, and currently dividing my time between the Zürich area of Switzerland and southern France. (That’s me in the photo at age 3, absorbed in a cookbook no doubt.) Besides Japan, France and Switzerland, I’ve also lived in the UK and the US for extended periods. While I am passionate about promoting Japanese cooking and culture, I’m also interested in plain, simple, delicious and easy to prepare food.

Just Bento is dedicated to the subject of healthy, simple bento lunches, some traditionally Japanese, some not so traditional. The focus is on bentos for health and weight-conscious adults, but many of the recipes and methods are applicable to bentos for all ages. The site was established in October 2007, and has rapidly grown to be one of the top destinations for people interested in bentos or obentos (お弁当）in English.

Just Bento is the sister site of Just Hungry, perhaps the best known Japanese recipe blog on the internet. There’s a lot more about me on the About page there if you are interested. (日本語のプロフィールは こちらです - Japanese profile.)

If you’re new to the site, you may want to start here: How Just Bento is organized, and finding your way around.

Just Bento in the press

Recent press appearances of note include:

• The New York Times
• The Japan Times
• WRS Radio Geneva (mp3 of radio interview)

and many more.

Privacy policy

Cookies: Cookies are small bits of data that are stored in your browser, and retrived by sites you visit online.

Some cookies are set by Just Hungry and/or Just Bento in order to track site usage, logged in status, and so on, as well as statistics for our in-house private banner ads. We do not, and never will, store any of your private information in this manner.

Some of our ads are served a third party, Google, which may store information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in cookies in order to provide advertisements about goods and services you may be interested in (the DART cookie). If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by Google, please visit this page: Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Email addresses: We do require a valid email address when you leave a comment or register on the Just Hungry or Just Bento sites. (Registration is mandatory to start new topics in the forums.) We require this to 1) prevent spammers and other annoyances, and 2) have a way to contact you (for password retrieval, etc.) We will never share your email address with any other party. We hate spam and unsolicited advertising more than you can imagine.

Comment and forum participation policy

All comments from unregistered users or registered users that are not logged in are held for approval by a site administrator. To learn how to register on the site, please read this forum post.

• Please keep your comments polite and on-topic.
• Do not use the comments or forums for spam.
• It’s fine to disagree and debate, but it’s not ok to be rude, insulting or aggressive. Don’t write anything that you wouldn’t say to someone in person, in someone’s house, just because you’re online and anonymous.

Any comments that violate these very simple policies will be deleted. Registered members who repeatedly violate these terms will have their accounts deleted.

Copyright and usage terms

Please see this page.

Advertising

Please see our advertising terms.

Product review policy

Please see our product review policy page.

Contact

To contact us, please use our Contact form.