Japanese Lunch - What is bento? [ Tokyo, Japan ]

As we're taking the Shinkansen we've got to mention those things called bento a Japanese boxed lunch set, very popular thing here nice, pre-packaged lunches, I'm sure you're familiar with them. The ones you can buy at the railway station are called 'ekiben' so that's what we're about to eat. Mine is yakitori style Krzysiek went for something more... Japanese style. Bento boxes are very popular in Japan. The whole idea is that it's a healthy, diverse lunch meal in one box. Carefully presented as well, that's a very important feature of bento. Just try typing 'bento box' into google image seach and you'll see. All those designer bento boxes with snack arranged in a way that they resemble I don't know, a Pokemon or something. It's their thing, their very special gimmick. Creative approach to arranging bento boxes. What do we have here? Some meat, radish, calabash... A couple of those rice rolls, I think they might be... no there's something inside, possibly fish. There's one potato, a piece of tofu here we have sweet potato... ah, and a piece of salmon as well This thing... no idea what it is. This is a great example of something very distinctive about food culture in Japan, a meal presenting a multitude of different flavours. There are many different kinds of bento in Japan, on the train you have ekiben for example, it's almost a form of culture, or a tradition if you go somewhere by train, you have to take a meal like this with you on board. But bento is also hugely popular in schools, parents prepare bento for their kids to take to school. As Krzysiek mentioned - the most elaborate and cute bento boxes are usually made by mums for their nursery school children. But it's something to eat at work on your lunchbreak... And there's this funny thing as well: it's considered a romantic thing to do if you're a girl: to prepare a homemade bento for your crush. Getting something like this, well, it's a meaningful signal. Means you're special.