I recently took a class at the Hiroshima YMCA on bento box making. Bentos are popular in Japan as a single portion take-out meal from a restaurant or a home-packed meal. All the Japanese children in L & J's school classes bring one every day and now they want me to send one with them too. The funny thing is that I doubt L& J would really eat anything in the bento boxes. Bento boxes usually included rice, fish or meat, and pickled or cooked vegetables.
Here is a picture of typical bento box an adult would buy from a restaurant:
(Thank you to justbento.com for the picture)
Here is a picture of a more American child friendly bento:
This is super cute and the kids would eat this. I just don't know if I want to get up even earlier to cut shapes out of cheese!
Here is the bento I made at my class:
Our bento boxes included sushi, cooked egg, pickled radish and carrot, sweet beans, grapes, tomatoes, and cooked meat.
I have now found one thing that I want to take back to the USA and that is a jubako box. A jubako box refers to a box consisting of two to five stacked sub-boxes, in which food is stored. We had a Japanese family over to our house for dinner and the mother brought her food in a jubako wrapped in a furoshiki (scarf). It was beautiful!!!
Here is an example of a jubako box that you can buy on ebay (they are a little bit nicer here though):
