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Bento

The word "bento" literally translates to "box lunch" and typically refers to a traditional Japanese style lunch box meal that consists of rice, fish or meat, and some cooked or pickled vegetables. The actual bento boxes come in all shapes and sizes from the most traditional hand crafted lacquer ware to those that are mass-produced and made of plastic.

Bento making has almost become a new art form with numerous cookbooks dedicated to making the perfect bento recipe. In recent years, a number of blogs have appeared documenting various bentos bloggers have made for themselves or others.

There are even blogs that have gone to extremes, turning bento making into entertainment, placing ingredients in the bento boxes to look like faces of politicians, celebrities, and anime characters.Of course, not everyone is as passionate about bento making and prefers instead to buy bentos for lunch at small family owned or chain bento shops or stands.

In every business district in Japan, there are several bento shops or stands where people line up to order a basic rice bento with meat and vegetable side dishes neatly placed in a plastic box, sometimes with a package of instant miso soup. There are also others who wish to save money by making their own bento, but buy ingredients at the supermarket’s frozen food section to speed up the bento making process. By doing this, all that needs to be done is to steam some rice and mix in some of last night’s leftovers.

For those interested in taking a bite into one of these delicious bento for lunch, search the Gourmet Navigator Delivery pages.（Japanese）