Three’s Company

Separate your meat and vegetables with this three-tiered bento box. It’s created in the image of a kokeshi, a traditional wooden doll from Miyagi Prefecture. Its head doubles as a soup bowl and the rest of its body can hold cream stew, rice, broccoli or whatever else your heart desires.

This is one of my favorite bento boxes because it’s microwavable and cute as a button. Few people will notice just how much food you’re scarfing down because they’ll be too enamored by the little girl you’re eating with.

Story has it, kokeshi dolls were originally created as a good luck charm for bearing healthy babies. Though if you really want healthy babies, eat plenty of cooked liver. Just throw it into one of these kokeshi containers and eat discreetly in the office. The bento box is held snug with an elastic band and fits neatly your bag. It also comes with air-tight lids to keep everything in place. Three bowls, no spills! \(@^_^@)/

Himawari

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Get on the Bus!

Here’s a school of animals ready to jump in your lunch box, feed you, and pick particles out of your teeth. What do you think…they’re toothpicks!

Moms will rejoice that they can finally get kids to eat their brussel sprouts. Just stick in a toothpick and watch them eat it like a piece of candy (well, hopefully). It may seem deceptive, but it’s just like playing choo-choo train with a spoon.

Japan has a way of transforming the mundane into something so awesomely cute. American toothpicks come in cinnamon flavor at best. In Japan, they’re transformed into a barnyard of happy animals, making everything all the more appetizing.

They work best in a kids’ bento box. After getting beaten up by the school bully, it’s always nice to have something that will cheer him up. Well, hopefully, his mom will be there to comfort him, too. v(^o<)

Himawari

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How to Get Your Kid to Eat

A piece of broccoli is never as appetizing as when it’s smiling at you. That’s why when a Japanese mom needs to feed a stubborn kid, she starts by making faces. That is, she cuts out a pair of eyes and a mouth from cheese slices and puts them over a mound of vegetables. Food tastes best when it’s grinning from ear to ear.

Japanese people call it ‘kyara-ben’ (character bentos), a lunch box filled with happy kids and chirping animals. Poke your chopsticks around and, lo and behold, it’s a bed of rice and chicken nuggets!

Of course, to make this pile of cuteness, you’ll need the proper tools. Here’s a few:

Face-cutter

The only choices here are happy, happier and happiest! But it’s always good to mix it up a bit, so choose wisely!

Food Stylus

Fill this pen up with ketchup, mustard, chocolate, or whatever else sits in your fridge. Use it to write down your kid’s name so that he’s the coolest student on campus.

Frying Pan for Eggs

One of the most specialized cooking tools, this frying pan will make a thin sheet of egg you can use to cover a rice ball or clothe a quail egg. The best part is that it’s tasty, too!

If you’d like to see cool bento creations, check out Anna the Red’s Bento Factory.

Himawari

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Thinking of doing business in Japan? We can make it easy for you!
japanizmo, a Los Angeles based company, provides practical solutions for U.S. ? Japan business projects. Our experienced Japanese staff will support all phases of your business project to seize business opportunities and turn your vision into a reality. >> Learn more

Get Lunch Smart!

First there was the Smart Car. Now there’s the Smart Bento produced by CUBEEGG, the most compact lunchbox known to man (2,290 yen). Measuring at 7 inches long and 2 inches wide, it’s a sleek mode of food transportation that you can plop in your purse or keep warm under your armpits. (^o<)v

‘Smart’ is the way to go these days. With the ‘smart car’ it’s about fuel efficiency and park-ability. With the bento it’s about saving cash and making use of last night’s leftovers. Too many of us grew up with more food on the table than we knew what to do (thus, the invention of food fights). But with the economy gone kaput, the ‘smart’ ones can weather this storm just by packing their own lunch a few times a week. Believe me, it adds up. On average I blow $10 just on a sandwich. Meanwhile, Wednesday night’s chow mein is sitting there collecting mold specks in my fridge.

The Smart Bento is also neat because it doesn’t take an extra bag to carry it. And the top lid contains a pair of chopstick so you never have to go fishing for plastic forks among your drawer of soy sauce packs. You also get an elastic belt for keeping each anti-microbial compartment tightly shut and you can choose from red, green, yellow, white, pink or black — nearly all the colors of the rainbow!

Lucky for us, now we can buy it from overseas. Check it out!

Himawari

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Thinking of doing business in Japan? We can make it easy for you!
japanizmo, a Los Angeles based company, provides practical solutions for U.S. ? Japan business projects. Our experienced Japanese staff will support all phases of your business project to seize business opportunities and turn your vision into a reality. >> Learn more
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My Lunchbox is Better Than Yours

What’s for lunch? McDonalds? Leftover pasta?

In a perfect world we’d all have amazingly cute lunches packed by mom. It’d have rice balls, juicy sausages, tiny boiled eggs, a pocketful of potato salad, an orange wedge… and every day we’d sit at a park bench nibbling on every morsel with a Thermos of green tea.

Realistically, it’s way easier just to throw last night’s meatloaf into a Tupperware and bring it to work. But being the Japanophile I am, I substitute Mister Tupper for a fancy bento-bako (lunch box) if just to pass off the illusion that my lunch is better than yours.

At Tokyu Hands you’ll find an entire section dedicated to these plastic boxes, some with their own tote and chopsticks, others shaped like a Hello Kitty.

Bento-bakos are one step cooler now, literally. Some of them carry a cold-pack to keep your fruit salad crisp and perky. And then there’s the insulated boxes: Stuff it with rice, microwave, and voila! your meal is pipping hot 6 hours later.

There’s also fancy lacquered boxes that come in stacks, that way you can separate your rice from the meat and vegetables. If you want to really impress your man, give him one of those and watch him devour each box as pink hearts flutter from his chest.

Any of these boxes will set you back $25-$30, so it’s a wonder why people would buy them when a Ziploc could easily do the trick. But if you ask me, a cute bento box is the way to go. It’s eco-friendly, it helps curb portions, and it’s so damn cute it even makes brussel sprouts taste good. So what are you waiting for? Buy your own box and be the envy of all your friends!

Himawari

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Thinking of doing business in Japan? We can make it easy for you!
japanizmo, a Los Angeles based company, provides practical solutions for U.S. ? Japan business projects. Our experienced Japanese staff will support all phases of your business project to seize business opportunities and turn your vision into a reality. >> Learn more
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