Bento (in Japanese; 弁当 or べんとう) are small boxed lunches that are very popular in Japan. Traditionally they were rice, fish or meat and carried in a laquered wooden box. In the past, they were very popular with school children, but as the children from poorer families were given lower-quality food, and the children from richer familes were given much better food, it obviously displayed your family’s status, so they were phased out in schools. Recently, they’ve become much more popular, but the same situation applies really. It’s considered a very important skill for a housewife to be able to prepare a nutritious and visually appealing boxed lunch – although now they’re packaged in plastic bento boxes, often decorated with idols, manga characters or nice designs.
Photo from Janine’s Flickr Stream
Typically with Japanese cuisine, they are presented beautifully and often the food is prepared to look like other things, such as rice balls in the shape of a face, penguin-shaped cookies etc. There are a multitude of tools available to the bento maker to prepare these, including cutters, food seperators that look like grass and little bottles for soy sauce in the shape of fish etc.
Historically they originated in the 1200’s and were a “dried meal” called hoshi-ii (糒 or 干し飯 in Japanese), although later on they were presented in the wooden boxes you sometimes see at nice restaurants in Japan. Travellers would often carry a “waist bento” called a koshibentō (腰弁当) which consisted of onigiri (御握り or おにぎり) which are small rice balls shaped into a triangle. Modern bentos often have these too, with a face made of other ingredients to make it more pleasing. Apparently onigiri were used by samurai who stored rice balls in leaves when they were out doing their samurai thing.
There are many types of bento too; choka bento (中華弁当) which is Chinese food, Kamameshi bentō (釜飯弁当) sold at train stations, Sushizume (鮨詰め) “packed sushi”, Shidashi bentō (仕出し弁当) normally prepared by a restaurant and often eaten at parties (containing things like pickles with tempura or katsu curry or sometimes western food) – and also Hinomaru bento (日の丸弁当) – one of my favorites, containing plain rice with an umeboshi (梅干) in the center to look like the Japanese flag (Hinomaru). Umeboshi is a distinctly Japanese food – a kind of plum picked in vinegar. Vinegar in Japan is often different to what the westerner would expect as umeboshi is picked in a barrel with lots of salt – the resulting juice and salt is the vinegar. It can be a shock to those trying it for the first time. It has an extremely sour and salty taste, and is said to improve health, despite the high salt content. For example, if you had a cold, you’d have “okayu” or “Japanese congee”, a type of rice porridge. Sometimes it’s put into Japanese drinks such as shochu for decoration and flavour. I’d recommend adventurous types to look some out at your local asian food store and try them. It’s a real Japanese experience!
