Editor’s note: In the Every Bento Tells a Story series, Chikako Tada, editor of Pen & Spoon, a website devoted to food, writes about various aspects of making bento. There is also a helpful video in ...

The YouTube recommendation algorithm is the devil’s handmaiden, but occasionally Satan comes through. A few days ago, the algorithm introduced me to the channel Imamu Room, a Japanese woman’s weekly ...

We don’t think of the bento box as an important innovation, but we should. Created sometime in 12th or 13th century Japan, the bento box arguably invented food packaging as we know it today. The ...

Everyone from school children to salary men in Japan look forward to when the lunch bell rings, signaling it’s time for bento. The artfully-arranged boxes boast different compartments, each filled ...

Bento means lunch or lunch box. But for most Japanese home cooks, the act of preparing a bento box can mean much more than that. A bento box represents a mother’s love for her family. For centuries, ...

Growing up outside of Tokyo, Chef Kenji Miyaishi’s mother used to send him off with bento boxes of onigiri rice balls, karaage fried chicken, tamago-yaki egg omelets and vegetables from her garden.

It always comes to this. Partaking of Japanese food is not just perfunctorily putting food into one’s mouth. There are rituals involved, as well as cultural references, whether pop or much older, more ...