Lifting the lid on Japan’s bento boxes | Hacker News Reader

Lifting the lid on Japan’s bento boxes

bbc.com

58 pointspseudolus26 comments

Just like with brand-name-clothing pressure that parents say they face in the west, most of this pressure is self-imposed and opt-outable.

Kids (and adults) will always find superficial things to form identity around and parents are making them a disservice by reinforcing it.

Today your kid could be bullied for their boring lunch box, next month it could be because the shape of their ears.

Day 0 of packing my kids lunches: BENTO!! Day 1 to n-1: Lunchables

Just kidding - I've been packing my kids' lunches for nearly 14 years, almost done when my younger one graduates high school next year. Sometimes I'd bento it up but usually more like sandwichtes and leftovers. I'm sure glad we don't have any bento peer pressure here.

The only reason why people are obsessed with bentos is because they are pretty. Throw them together like your regular lunch sold at supermarkets no one would find them interesting anymore.

Aesthetics is as important to a product as its functionality. Here's your statement as iPod vs Normad-

"The only reason why people were obsessed with the iPod is because they are pretty. Throw the play music features together like your regular MP3 players made by some generic electronic companies no one would find them interesting anymore."

Lunchables were the original bento box (at least for American kids).

They weren't pretty, but we loved them because the little compartments for each food was cute and clever.

Personally, I loved them because the Lunchables, true to American stereotypes, came with a packaged sugary drink (e.g. Capri Sun) and a chocolate of some sort (e.g. Reese’s, Butterfinger).

Now they make “healthier” adult ones courtesy of Boar’s Head, but Lunchables are definitely not good for you, whereas at least a bento tries to be.

The only reason why people are obsessed with bentos is because they are pretty.

Okay, go on. :-) Agree or disagree, "presentation" is a thing. Sky is blue, people like pretty boxes of food.

On the flip side, boxes that look like someone just threw them together look sad, like no one cared.

Taking store-bought food and adjusting the presentation to make it look homemade isn't a purely Japanese phenomenon. Even in the United States, frozen apple pie sellers will tell folks to take the pie out of the aluminum tin and put it in a glass or ceramic baking dish to make the pie look homemade.

I rather appreciate how the Japanese still care about how food is presented. (I believe the idiom goes, "you eat with your eyes first.") I hope that in the pursuit of gender equality, pretty meals don't get lost the way that they have in the states.

> frozen apple pie sellers will tell folks to take the pie out of the aluminum tin and put it in a glass or ceramic baking dish to make the pie look homemade.

What's even more ironic is doing that completely changes how the pie bakes, likely making the result even worse. Those heavy ceramic pie plates mean it takes longer for the pie to get up to temp and cook, often means the pie sticks to the plate, and makes it more difficult to cook the crust properly along with the pie (you could prebake the crust, but not with a frozen pie). I'm pretty sure most businesses use pie tins (foil is wasteful and structurally a poor choice).

I guess the whole goal is perception and convenience, not necessarily quality.

Perhaps they mean you should bake the pie in the tin, then transfer it to the baking dish.

Japanese food art is nuts. There are specialists in the art of creating super realistic-looking fake food. This is not merely decorative, it also is set up as a display in restaurant fronts to whet the appetite and give you an idea of what's on the menu.

And boy does that make it difficult to decide where to eat.

But also easier to order. I've taken more than one waiter outside and pointed at the plastic food.

Most Japanese restaurants have menus illustrated with photographs of their photogenic dishes. Foreigners who can't read the menu items can simply point to what they want. Japan's beautiful cuisine is not just aesthetic, it's functional as well. A lot of Japanese craftsman culture is like this, both beautiful and profoundly functional. A broken ceramic vessel repaired with kintsugi not only has an extended lifetime, it's arguably more beautiful than when it was brand new.

There’s a story that many restaurants buy their desserts from industrial dessert makers and basically defrost and reheat to order. Kinda like Starbucks (and most chain coffeeshops) do for pastries.

It makes economic sense but it sucks as a customer.

> The only reason why people are obsessed with bentos is because they are pretty.

I beg to differ. Don't give two shits about presentation myself, but unagi bento from Japanese stations is simply excellent fast food.

Our perception of food completely changes the experience. People have experimented with dying white wine red, and people tend to describe it using terms associated with red wine.

Similarly, there have been some studies suggesting kids will prefer foods packaged or wrapped certain ways, as they associate the packaging with foods they like.

Not just "people", but experts in training at one of the best oenology (wine) schools in the world. it's ALL about perception and exception:

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam...

The minimalist approach of the matpakke is probably a lot better for parents and childrens' mental health and stress levels.

Peer pressure is an unfortunate reality in society but so counter-productive. Saw a similar thing with birthday parties in primary school where some mothers were apparently reduced to tears due to the stress and pressure of wanting to have the best party for their child.

Thankfully, after Prep & Grade 1 everyone was done with parties.

I wish this article didn't just talk about the "shame society" in Japan but also the culture of taking pride in your work and valuing craftsmanship. To me that's what these bento boxes say a lot more about than the pressure to keep up appearance. So many aspects of Japanese culture are finely done even when the craftsman is anonymous or their work won't be personally recognized.

"It is easy for a non-Japanese person to shrug off this societal or cultural pressure, but it is something that stayed with me all my life, even though I have lived abroad for half of it."

Right, I'm not saying that doesn't exist. I'm just saying it's only half the story.

A healthy home-made lunch with a variety of different items in it is practically a necessity for school children. I've seen teachers scold parents for not providing a good enough lunch. However, where this article gets it wrong, IMHO, is in asserting that character bentos are indicative of the amount of effort that mothers spend on making lunches. It absolutely is not (and I've seen thousands upon thousands of bento boxes to prove it -- to myself, anyway ;-) ). It takes about 30 minutes a day to make lunches, generally. This is a long time especially when you add in cooking breakfast as well. Many women get up at 5 am to make lunch for their kids/husband before going off to work themselves.

Character bentos, as the article states, are far from the norm. When you are talking about people who think they need to make these, they are exactly the same kind of people who are stressing out about not being able to keep up with Martha Stewart's staff in the US. As far as I can tell, that pressure is entirely self imposed. The vast majority of people in society completely ignore it.

However, when the author states that there is societal and cultural pressure to achieve a certain level, it's absolutely true. This is not just with respect to women, but also with men as well. It's a double edged sword, though. For example, with bentos, you have an entire country where in almost every household you have at least one person who knows how to make healthy food and who practices it every day. You have country of school children, all of whom eat at least one home cooked meal every single weekday. You have no opportunity to for big business to negotiate what's going to be included in the school lunch because for the most part there is no school lunch. It is objectively a good thin.

There is a price, though. Is the price too high? I'm definitely on the fence at that. I used to make bentos and breakfast for my wife and I every single morning. We have no children, but to be honest, making 2 or 4 bentos takes virtually no extra time (and, in fact, 2 is sometimes difficult to manage the really small amounts of ingredients you have to use). Of the things that working women need to do for their families, this is probably the least onerous IMHO.

The very first pull-quote is "Bento boxes are expressions of a mother’s love for her child".

That doesn't say anything about the Japanese culture of craftsmanship.

It’s clarified later in the article that she’s saying making lunch for your children is the expression, not specifically fancy bentos.

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