Japan: Hiroshima - Bento Box

January's Japanese Cooking Class topic was O-Bento Boxes! Bento Boxes are everywhere in Japan - Seven-Eleven, convenient stores, grocery stores... For those unfamiliar, a Bento box is a typical lunch that consists of little portions of different foods nicely arranged in a lunchbox. Japanese women usually get up at 5am and start making Bento boxes for their husbands and children's lunch to take to work & school. Many women do this til their child goes to college. And we thought peanut butter & jelly sandwiches were a pain....

A proper Bento box will include 5 different colors. Color scheme is very important. Here are examples:
White - rice
Black - Sesame seeds, laver porphyras pp
Yellow - Egg, Pumpkin, Sweet Potatoe, corn, pickeled daikon radish
Red - Shrimp, carrot, tomato, apple, strawberry
Green - Cucumber, greens, parsley, asaparagus, green pepper

Here is my O-Bento I made. Unfortunately it does not look pretty, I was hungry and just threw it all in and did not arrange it...