food

Make your bento look like your favorite anime characters

17 Comments

Would you like to make your lunch look like your favorite anime character? Maybe Pikachu from “Pokemon?”

FindJPN, which is an activity booking service where you can sign up for unique and fun Japanese events at reasonable prices, will hold an event in which you can learn to make your own “kyaraben” (character lunch box) from 19:45 – 22:00 on Oct 21 (Fri). The cost is 3,500 yen.

With “kyaraben,” the food in your bento can look like cute cartoon characters, animals, or even beautiful plants. Making a kyaraben used to be just a trick to get children excited about eating their bento but it has now turned into an art form where even competitions are held. You can learn to make not only character lunch boxes in the shape of Hello Kitty and Pikachu but also healthy tofu balls, flowers from cherry tomatoes and sunflowers out of small sausages.

Everyone is welcome to join in the event, so it is also a good opportunity to meet new people.

For more details of the event, visit http://findjpn.com/top/activity/index?id=13

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17 Comments
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Nothing more than "busy" work for mom who can then bully other mothers by doing the bento contest. Sad and pathetic. Other ways to show love than crappy, precooked food heavy in dyes in the bento box.

-5 ( +2 / -6 )

No tanks and this time a gree with tmarie. In my family we make healthy lunch boxes. Rice is rarley included we prefer homemade wholemeal bread or rolls.and unprocessed foods. Pikachu and similar is not part of the lunches though i guess in Japan it may even by even for adult members of the family.

-4 ( +2 / -5 )

Making food look like characters is bad idea.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

omg!! that's so cute~ >o< yummy

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Any child who will not eat food which looks like ordinary food is obviously not hungry.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Stone, 100% agree with you!

LH10, glad to see this type of crap working on something. Something about dressing up, mutton, lamb. Nasty fish paste will be nasty fish paste regardless of it being pink and in the shape of a flower.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

i love how the Japanese have fun with their food. it's very creative and beautiful. Thank u Japan! ^o^"

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

I am partial to Shokupanman

0 ( +0 / -0 )

like a cake. I like to see well-decorated food.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

IMHO, a course to make bentos healthy would be time better spent than making them cute. White rice and deepfried crap are still just that. Nitrate sausages are still mystery meat, even when you cut them to resemble cute little octopuses (octopi?).

In a way, it DOES seem very Japanese, though. Concentrating on form instead of taste or nutrition.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Great Idea!! and you can so make healthy foods for lunches and be creative. The tender care n love a parent puts into a meal from time to time really reflects strongly on a child growing up. All this technology and both parents always being swamped caught up with themselves to just do basics, is like say what more do you want i fed you. That just says to your kid, I'd rather you wasn't born. Doesn't have to be done everyday or all the time, but a special treat from time to time, be no different then having pizza n ice cream once every two weeks, or something different. And aesthetic with japanese isn't always being unhealthy living there years ago I found alot of great looking food that was healthy and pretty neat looking at then what i see here on a regular basis in the states.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

tmarie, it sounds like you know some not-so-nice mothers.......those were the last thoughts onmh mind or my friends' minds when making obentos.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Hima, when I see boxes like this, I think of nasty PTA moms comparing. A quick trip to any sports day in Japan will be full of them - let alone on weekdays! Sad I know but I think perhaps I spent a heck of a lot more time with some j-moms at schools than most here have. There is also bullying between the kids when it comes to this stuff. You don't show your kid you love them by cutting up nasty sausages of mystery meat in cute characters. Personally, I think time reading to them/with them would be more productive!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

time reading to them/with them would be more productive!

It's possible to do both.....(though maybe not if you're rushing to get junior off to day care 'cos you've got to be in the office in 20 minutes...). I was never into the nasty sausages or mystery meat, but I did find it fun making little rice kokeshi dolls wrapped in egg kimono with seaweed hair and sesame eyes, and turning boiled eggs into cute bunnies. And the children enjoyed it. I never noticed any bullying, but then maybe the 'nasty PTA moms' were dumbstruck by the working blue-eyed blonde mom producing any kind of bento, never mind a decorated one. I'm inclined to think though that they weren't nasty in the first place.

On sports days our group of nakayoshi families would all spread out our bentos and everyone would tuck in. No bullying, no rivalry, just people enjoying themselves.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Cleo, you obviously have different experiences to what I have seen - and have heard first hand from friends. I hope if we have sprogs, the other moms are like the ones you encountered and not the ones I have seen in the past,

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Sad I know but I think perhaps I spent a heck of a lot more time with some j-moms at schools than most here have.

I was on the PTA several times. Bitchy women are everywhere, I just don't associate with the type at all, the 'career' PTA types who know everything better than everybody else. With my friends and I it was friendly banter, nothing more.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

That's the thing, as a teacher, I had no choice but to deal with them. Perhaps I have just seen more "bad" ones because they are so vocal while the nice ones stay out of the way??

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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