Boxed In

 

In recent days, I've received some light-hearted ribbing from my salaryman that my posts have been a bit heavy on pictures and light on stories.  Yes, I know. I'm falling behind. But I have two words in my defense: bento boxes.  

After just three days in Japanese kindergarten, Patrick shunned his American-style lunches and declared a preference for the bento boxes his peers enjoyed.  While it was great fun shopping for the cute tins and clever containers for these portable little lunches, figuring out what to put in them has been a challenge. Well, Patrick, what do the other kids bring?  What do the other moms pack? He couldn't elaborate, leaving me to demystify the bento lunch on my own.

My attempt at solving this mystery found me back at the depato yet again, this time scouring the lunch section for clues.  There I found curious-looking prep tools, among them a Hello Kitty die-cut punch for nori (seaweed) strips, used to decorate rice balls.  

Kit in hand, I wavered just a minute before a nagging self-awareness jolted me to a sad realization:  Did I really see myself tweezer-ing tiny nori cutouts onto rice balls on a daily basis?   I sure love Patrick, but, gosh, that seemed like work to me.  And who has time for this anyway, right?

I lamented this challenge to my Mommy group back in Corvallis and, along with their condolences, received this video:

How to Make Hello Kitty Bento Lunch

Hmmm.  Evidently, some people have time for this.  

I started asking my new friends about their kids' lunches.  Were their lunches fairly elaborate?  Did they take the time to make cute decorations and snip tiny details with eyebrow scissors?  Shy smiles. Some moms do, they replied. One mom shared a few of her own creations:

     
Yes, evidently some people have time for this.  

It would be convenient and sadly self-serving to dismiss these lunches as the output of someone with too much time on her hands, because it seems the bento box is just one small representation of a culture that somehow manages to have time for this, and for a multitude of other things! This attention to detail is evidenced in infinite ways...  

It's the swish-swishing of an old broom as one of our apartment caretakers painstakingly gathers the day's confetti of ginkgo leaves, only to swish-swish and gather tomorrow's.  

Or the miracle of quick and confident paper-folds that results in a cleverly-wrapped gift at the check-out of a department store. 

It's the professional-quality choral and puppet production that the kindergarten mothers just happened to have put on for the students last week.  

These women belong to one of several clubs available to the mothers at the Kindergarten.  
Their beautiful choral performance was followed by a darling puppet show, written by one of the moms in that club.  The sets and puppets were all hand-made by the moms...of course!

Oh, I could go on and on!  There are endless examples, impressive and admirable, and more than I could possibly mention here.  My goal is to learn all their secrets in the short time we're here, but in the meantime, I've got a lunch to make. ;-)