So, bento.

弁当 (that's bento!) is the traditional box lunch of Japan. While other countries were figuring out the concept of サンド イッチ (sandoicchi), Japanese cooks were making true works of art with 漬物 (pickled vegetables), protein (especially fish), and most important of all, ご飯 (rice). These are usually packed in a ratio of 4 parts rice to 2 parts protein to 1 part other ingredients. However, modern guidelines often shoot for a bit less rice (the also easy to remember 3:2:1 ratio), and you can adjust depending on what you're going for (more carbs and protein for a growing kid, more vegetables for a dieter) or what's in season.

For more backstory on bento, check out the Wikipedia article, Just Bento, Lunch in a Box, or just Google "bento." There's a lot of history I've skipped already, and many types of bento I won't be addressing in this post, and it's all really interesting!

Modern day bentos don't need to be nearly as complicated as they were in the olden days: one big 御握り (onigiri, or rice ball) can be your lunch! So can a sandwich: there's awesome collapsable boxes made for them. As long as you shoot for a good variety of foods and colors (lots of colors means lots of tasty nutrition!) you're set!

However, there are still a lot of crazy complicated bentos out there, and not just in the traditional style. キャラ弁 (kyaraben), or character bento, recreate popular characters such Bob the Builder, Pikachu, the Nekobasu, and Anpanman. (Since I don't do much in this style- like, nothing at all- I might every now and then link to a cool example of the style.)

My lunches generally have a grain or a pulse (rice and lentils are my big two), a small bit of dairy (wrapped cheese or cream cheese), fruit or vegetable or both (mango blueberry with honey, lime, and ginger is MY fruit salad), and something protein like- generally fake crab or a boiled egg. Or I'll do wraps: sometimes I'll combine a whole wheat tortilla, soft cheese, tomato, and basil wraps are my favorite. I try to have at least one Japanese element in every meal, to keep my on my toes. That doesn't always happen: the lunch I made the day I started blog-writing has no distinctly Japanese food: it was curry lentils, wheat tortilla, and a lettuce, basil, tomato, and onion salad.

(Then I wondered why I'd misplaced my delicious grape Pinky, a Japanese "mint" candy, because my breath smelled like alliums and the artificial grape would have knocked it out. More on Pinky later!)

I got into bento via, guess what, the Internet. I've always had a fascination with real packed lunches: I usually just brought a Lean Pocket on days we couldn't do hot lunch at my small private school (the hot lunch was a Tuesday Wednesday Thursday sometimes Friday affair), but the packed lunches in Farmer Boy, the Wayside School stories, and The Land of Oz fascinated me. When I found out that Japan had a totally awesome lunch box culture, I was hooked on the concept. I bought my first box at a Daiso in Bellingham, Washington. When that broke I got 4 more online. Then I bought a couple of American food storage/lunch box containers at the grocery store. It's pretty official: I'm a bit of an addict.

Since this post is getting pretty long, I'll be doing my box inventory in another post in just a second! Don't worry, it will be the work of a moment.

Vocabulary (click on highlighted kanji for stroke order from Kanji-a-Day.com):
弁当 (bento) box lunch
サンド イッチ (sandoicchi) sandwich
漬物 (tsukemono) pickled vegetables
ご飯 (gohan) rice
御握り (onigiri) rice ball