Bento is the famous boxed lunch consumed millions of times daily across Japan, and fast becoming a sensation all over the world. As a rule, bento lunches in Japan are almost always comprised of a quantity of rice along with meat, fish, vegetables or other foods that go well with the rice, which is collectively called okazu, the “main course.” Although there are endless varieties of bento you can create, there are several well-defined categories that I’ll tell you about. The most basic type of bento there is is probably noriben, white rice with nori seaweed over the rice, which you can easily make at home. Another is toriben, essentially chicken with teriyaki sauce over rice, although one of the great mysteries of Japan is that no one seems to use the word teriyaki here. I love jubako, the “stackable” bento that comes on two or three levels, and you never know what the next section will contain until you open it — it’s quite fun. When my mother-in-law was growing up in the 50s, her family didn’t have much money, so she had to eat hinomaru bento, or “Circle of the Sun” boxed lunch, which is a big section of white rice with a small, round ume-boshi (pickled Japanese plum) in the center, like the Japanese flag. In general, the kind of bento lunch most men would love to eat is called aisai bento, literally “loving wife lunch,” the word for the delicious hand-made lunch a man’s wife will make for him. If a married man is eating bento and a Japanese person passes by, there’s a 77% chance they’ll smirk and make a comment about how jealous they are that you’re eating aisai bento and they’re not.
