What is a bento box?

A Bento box is a single-portion take-out or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. The word bento literally means “convenient” or “convenience”. The word, Bento, describes this type of lunch box because it is usually nicely packaged, bitesized, doesn’t need to be heated up and easy is to eat while on the go.

While Bento boxes are easy to eat they usually take a bit of time and skill to make properly. The bento is usually very healthy and can contain fresh fish, vegetables, fruit, and lean meat. They can be elaborately arranged in a style called kyaraben, meaning character bento. This type of bento is decorated to look like popular characters from Japanese anime, comic books, or video games. Oekakiben or picture bento, another style of bento box, is decorated to look like people, animals, buildings and monuments, or items such as flowers and plants. The original idea behind these styles was to make lunch boxes look attractive so that children were encouraged to eat properly.

The first record of a bento-style lunch in Japan was during the Kamakura Period from 1185 to 1333. During this time, cooking rice and storing it to eat later became popular among the people of Japan. The containers for this were usually lacquer boxes. Nowadays the containers can be made in a wide variety of different materials including your typical tupperware.

There are similar forms of boxed lunches in Asian countries including the Philippines (baon), Korea (dosirak), Taiwan (biàn dāng in Mandarin and “piān-tong” in Taiwanese) and India (tiffin). The Hawaiian culture has also adopted localized versions of bento featuring local tastes.

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