Just Bento

Great news for fans of cute kyaraben, especialy Hello Kitty themed ones: the Hello Kitty bento decorating set that was featured in this post is now available at J-List/JBox! They offer it for $25, which considering the original Japanese price is 1980 yen is not too bad. Now Her Royal Kittiness can invade bento boxes worldwide with consummate ease! Now, can I resist getting a set myself?

(Note: I’m not sure from the description of the product if the second nori punch with the Kassie and Teddy faces is included - although the pictures do show Kassie and Teddy-shaped onigiri with the appropriate nori faces. If this is important to you, you may want to ask J-List if it is included before ordering.) Rita just got hers and let us know that it does include two nori punches!

(Disclaimer: JustBento is a J-List affiliate.) continue reading...

As I posted yesterday, making individual pies in muffin or cupcake liners is a great way to make ‘planned leftovers’ from dinner look neat enough to put into a bento box. As Sile suggested in the comments, if you don’t want to use throwaway paper cups, silicone cups are a reusable alternative. Calphalon makes a nice silicone liner and cupcake pan set which would be perfect for this. The liners are in pretty pastel colors.

You can also use the liners as dividers in your bento, for salads, fruit, and so on. They sell the tin and liners as a set, as shown here, or the liners on their own. Extras might be a good idea to have if you do freeze the food ‘cupcakes’. continue reading...

Since Just Bento is attracting a lot of new readers these days (thank you!) starting now I’m going to be highlighting some of the most popular or interesting articles from the past month every month, in case you missed something good.

• Bento teasing? Do you or your kids get teased about your (or their) bento? The comments are really thought provoking.
• Carrot rice two ways. These two very easy ways of adding carroty goodness to plain rice have gotten great reviews from readers who’ve tried them.
• Tuna tofu miso mini-burgers. Another hit recipe - cheap and easy to make.
• Bento boxes of the week: Stainless steel People seemed to really warm to the idea of a durable, non-plastic bento. This was a followup of sorts to a question posed in March, how to get rid of the plastic smell in bento boxes.

See more entries from April, not to mention March, February and more! continue reading...

Before we start the weekend - car themed kyaraben eye candy. continue reading...

Good news for bento fans in Europe and the UK in particular: as reported previously, Japan Centre’s online store has expanded their bento box and accessory lineup from Daiso. Accessories are priced at £1.45 to &1.49, and bento boxes like the popular Lube Sheep Dragonfly model are £2.50 - pretty reasonable I think. While Japan Centre, who are based in London, only ship food items within Europe, they do ship non-food items worldwide, Always figure in the shipping costs and shop around for the best deals! See Where to buy bento items. (*Disclaimer: Japan Centre is an advertiser on Just Bento, but I’m also a very happy repeat customer.)

This week I’m going back to the handcrafted bento boxes that I love. The material in the spotlight is bamboo. continue reading...

A list of bentos from no. 31 onwards - featured so far on Just Bento. Bentos no. 1- 30 are here. In addition, some also-ran bentos that didn’t make the list. continue reading...

This week’s bento item of the week is something that goes into a bento box for a change - microwaveable rice. continue reading...

You’ve assembled a colorful, nutritious and cute bento box. You can’t wait for lunch time. You open it up and… you attract a crowd of classmates or coworkers, curious about your lunch.

Has this happened to you? It certainly has to me. At first it did bother me, especially if I packed a bentos or an onigiri picnic basket for a train trip. It’s amazing how strong soy sauce and nori seem to smell in an enclosed train compartment! Swiss people are generally polite and reserved, so rarely do they out and out stare - though on a couple of occasions I’ve had an old lady enthusiastically point at my bento, asking this or that. But, these days I don’t mind it at all. Well maybe a little bit, but not much. And people who know me, or The Guy when he takes bentos on the road, are used to our unique lunch boxes, and perhaps even a bit envious! (The sandwiches sold in the train are expensive and pretty sad…)

But what if it’s your kid’s bento lunch getting all that attention? continue reading...

Just in case you follow Just Bento but not Just Hungry, I’ve put up How to cook lotus root over there. Lotus root is a nice alternative starchy vegetable, with lots of fiber. Plus it looks pretty without the need to fuss with it - perfect for bentos. (This is for you fossettes :))

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the first Sanrio Character Bento Contest. The results of the second round of the contest, which will hopefully become an annual event, have just been announced. The winner of the Gold prize (called the Golden Kyarabenist award) is this tour de force picnic lunch!

The winner has a kyaraben blog (in Japanese of course), and she talks about her winning entry. She says she got her inspiration for this bento from the cute egg carton. (I like using egg cartons as disposable bento containers too, though mine are not even close to this level of cute). [Update:] Digging deeper into her blog, it turns out she was also the winner of the Yokohama bento contest too. She is one talented bento artist.

More after the jump… continue reading...

Here is another kyaraben or character bento contest to enjoy. This one is a little different - it was sponsored by the Sotetsu Group 150 Project, an ongoing event by a railway and transportation company in Yokohama commemorating the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Port of Yokohama. The winners of the contest were announced on April 1st.

This is the top winning entry, a truly impressive tour-de-force that depicts the landscape of the Yokohama area. I especially love the blue jelly or kanten (agar-agar) cups that represent the ocean.

continue reading...

Hi folks. I will be mostly offline for a week or so. Some new articles that are already written up will (if it works out) get posted but replying to comments and so on will have to wait a bit. Here’s why in case you don’t follow Just Hungry too. I’ll be back though! :)

(Update on my status is here.) \

The author of the book Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes (my review here) Christopher Salyers, has an excerpt of the interview he did with the one father/bento creator that appears in the book.

Takupapa (meaning the father of Takkun, his son’s nickname) started making cute kyaraben for his son when his wife was hospitalized. Quoting from the interview:

What is Charaben to you?

Charaben is a collection of precious times I spent with my son. Each and every Charaben has an episode, and I hope they will become good memories when he grows up.

And here’s the link to Takupapa’s bento blog (in Japanese). Takkun has one year left to go in kindergarten, and Takupapa plans to continue making those cute bento for him until he enters first grade in the spring of 2009.

(Incidentally, someone asked me if there is a difference between charaben and kyaraben. There isn’t - it’s just two ways of spelling out a Japanese word. The original is キャラ弁, and it’s a combination of キャラクター (character) and 弁当　(bento). I prefer the phonetic kyaraben, since I keep reading charaben with the ch part pronounced as in chair.) continue reading...

The kyaraben (cute character bento) artist in Japan does not have to go it alone, armed only with basic tools. There’s a big array of specialized tools that she (or the rare he) can use. I saw this company’s products mentioned in several Japanese kyaraben blogs as being easy to use and innovative. And indeed they seem to be. continue reading...

I’ve been doing a lot of background organizing on Just Bento, now that it has a few months under its belt. So far, I’ve been featuring mainly bento staples or johbisai, things that you can make in advance and stock in the freezer, refrigerator or elsewhere. There are lots of things that aren’t well suited to cooking in advance (or any earlier than the night before) though. So I’ll be writing up more individual item recipes. continue reading...

Now that there’s a comfortable amount of content on Just Bento, I’ve added two features to the site: an index page of all entries on the site, and a recipe only index. (The links are in the top navigation, on the left side of the page.) Both pages are sortable by title or date, and clicking on a category will take you to a page which lists all entries under that category. I hope you’ll find them useful!

Here are some more achingly cute and amazing kyaraben (character bentos) to enjoy, from yet another contest. This time it was one sponsored by Bandai, makers of various video games and the infamous Tamagotchi. The bento contest had three divisions, and the results were just announced yesterday. This is the winning bento in the Tamagotchi division.

Yes I know, I said “!!!!!!!!” when I saw that too.

You can check out the creator’s own blog (in Japanese of course), where she has many more closeups of her amazing creation in this entry. Her blog has lots of how-to entries and closeup photos of various bento goods, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of the cute bento style. (Her profile says she makes kyaraben for her 2 year old and 4 year old kids.) continue reading...

Two very different Japanese bentos, both contest winners, both made with love. continue reading...

If you’ve ever bought an inexpensive small bento box at a 100 yen shop or via eBay, the chances are pretty high that it was made by one company, Nakano Co.. They are the ones responsible for the bento boxes carrying the mysterious Lube Sheep logo. After visiting their company web site, I still have no idea what it actually means, and it probably doesnt mean anything at all - it’s just a cute piece of Japanglish that someone in the company thought sounded good. (Yes, I know it sounds a bit dirty, but let’s try not to go there.) continue reading...

The last couple of featured bento boxes have been strictly practical. This week I’m returning to the realm of the sublime, with these handcrafted wooden and lacquered bento boxes from Akita prefecture in northern Japan. continue reading...

I’ve boosted the information on the bento archive list - the completed bento how-tos are the heart of the site after all. Instead of just a simple listing of thumbnails, each bento now has the Time needed, Calories, Type and Protein sources (which indicate whether a bento is vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore) indicated. So, now you can scan the page for the bento that suits your time, calorie, or eating preferences.

I don’t know where the days are going. It’s already February 15th, and time to decide which vegetable and herb seeds to get for spring. (For me, flowers come in a distinct second after edible gardening.) This weekend I’m going to try to be a bit more organized than most years and sort through the seeds I’ve kept from last year, and figure out what I need to order.

If you are a gardener, even if your garden is limited to some pots on a sunny windowsill, if there’s one herb you should try to grow it’s shiso. Shiso, or perilla to give its botanical name, is a very refreshing herb that can be used in all manner of ways. For bentos though one interesting aspect of shiso is that it has some antibacterial qualities. That’s one reason why you see green shiso leaves being used as a garnish with sashimi. You can use the fully grown leaves as edible dividers, to wrap rice or meat or other things, and a lot more. See this bento from last summer where I used salted shiso leaves as onigiri wrappers. I love shiso-wrapped onigiri, they taste so fresh! I think that shiso is used quite a lot in the winning Hello Kitty bento too (for the head wrapper and the paws). continue reading...

An adorable handmade bento bag from Etsy. continue reading...

Oh rats. It seems I’ve missed the deadline for submissions for the 2nd edition of the Sanrio Kyaraben Contest, which was on the 7th. Well ok, I’m kidding - since cute kyaraben or character bentos are not really my style. I do admire them as a sort of edible art form though - the time and patience required to make something that will, ultimately, be eaten in a few minutes (more often than not by a kid who will stir it around and mess it up first) is mindboggling.

This bento was the grand prize winner of the first edition of the contest, starring of course, Her Royal Kittyness. Wow, just wow.

Check out the other winners on this page. continue reading...

The sturdy, microwave-safe Ikea 365+ food savers are great inexpensive bento boxes. They look good too. continue reading...

The minimalist white bento box offerings from Muji. continue reading...