Bento-ing Japanese Style

What is Bento-ing? What is a Bento? 

All valid questions.

Lets ask wikiepdia for some answers : Bento (弁当 bentō^?)^[1] is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine.

Bento can be elaborately arranged in a style called "kyara-ben" or "character bento". Kyaraben (キャラ弁^?) is typically decorated to look like popular Japanese cartoon (anime) characters, characters from comic books (manga), or video game characters. 


Another popular bento style is "oekakiben" or "picture bento". This is decorated to look like people, animals, buildings and monuments, or items such as flowers and plants. Contests are often held where bento arrangers compete for the most aesthetically pleasing arrangements.

Lets use some visuals to stimulate your thought process:

This piggy bento is so cute I found it off the internet and it is already inspiring me to make one right now.

Here is some of my bento accessories that I need to help make delicious and kawaii (cute) bento boxes for me and my boyfriend and sometimes his brother to eat.

As I mentioned before I buy these things off of the two bento websites (When I am stressed... I shop)This is my recent bento accessory update. The little animal containers are a lot smaller then I thought they would be, so I guess they will be only good for sauces and not pieces of fruit. Also the bright blue thing in the right is actually a hot dog cutter to make your hot dog look like penguins. WHO DOESN'T LIKE TO EAT PENGUINS??

This is one of my most favourite bento box containers. a cute little panda it really helps with the portion control. IT is two layer and can be microwaved but is made in China and sourced to Japan. It is too small for a normal growing or adult male but perfect for those who don't' want to eat too much or for a snack.

The first picture is my first attempt at a bento cute but not many colours and the second one is my more recent bento of different colours using roe to change the colour of the rice. I also made octopuses out of my hot dog and poked little sesame eyes into it. The little panda holds some soy sauce and there care picks that hold the food and deco in place. I recently also made a bento with pandas in it but I didn't have time to take a picture. I am still perfecting the panda since the mould is much shallower and creates pandas that fall apart easily.

You can see in the right corner my new panda making kit.

Here are some quick pics of the steps its takes to make a bento. these two pics are super easy steps and not all of the steps required.

For those even more interested there are a lot of youtube videos to help you one that my cousin gave me :

Why don't people bento more? Well Bento-ing takes a long time and requires deft fingers and patience. It took me 2 to 3 and sometimes 4 hours to completely prep, make and design 2 to 3 bento boxes.