Bento for a Big Boy
Bento for a Big Boy rice, minced beef, egg, asparagus, nama yatsuhashi , jelly snack -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2013 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/200 sec, f/7.1, ISO 6400 — image data
Bento for a Big Boy
rice, minced beef, egg, asparagus, nama yatsuhashi, jelly snack

Anthony (fifth grade) has a school field trip today for which Fumie had to make a bento lunch. It's been a while since he needed one of these, though when in preschool (five years ago!) he needed a bento every day.

Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2013 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — image data

The challenges of bento design are many... food that he'll eat without being fussy, food that will stay fresh without refrigeration until lunch, a presentation that is both pleasing and robust against the bumps and bruises of the inside of a backpack, all while being both healthy and sufficiently nutritious for a long day of hiking. It's perhaps easier now than when he was a baby, but whoever said “Motherhood isn't rocket science” was making a slight against rocket scientists.

As Fumie was arranging the sliced asparagus, it was hard to miss the similarity in shape to ballet pointe shoes all lined up.


All 2 comments so far, oldest first...

This may be a dumb question, but why don’t they use lunch boxes? The small, soft-sided insulated lunch boxes my kids use are the same size as the old metal ones we used to have, and you can pop a cold-pack into them and they’re still cold when they get home from school. Plus you have the added advantage of not having to worry if the food mixes.

The bento thing has worked well in Japan for centuries… I don’t suppose they see any particular reason to adopt someone else’s traditions. —Jeffrey

— comment by Marcina (Bellingham, WA) on April 30th, 2013 at 1:17am JST (10 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink

They truly elevate lunch to an art form, don’t they? But the Japanese are so wonderfully artistic in all they do. I used to love seeing your lovely wife’s food presentation posts. What a great mum! Please do post more of these?

— comment by Zara on May 3rd, 2013 at 9:19pm JST (10 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink
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