
Lifting the lid on Japan’s bento boxes - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191015-lifting-the-lid-on-japans-amazing-bento-boxes
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Legogris
Just like with brand-name-clothing pressure that parents say they face in the
west, most of this pressure is self-imposed and opt-outable.

Kids (and adults) will always find superficial things to form identity around
and parents are making them a disservice by reinforcing it.

Today your kid could be bullied for their boring lunch box, next month it
could be because the shape of their ears.

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zwieback
Day 0 of packing my kids lunches: BENTO!! Day 1 to n-1: Lunchables

Just kidding - I've been packing my kids' lunches for nearly 14 years, almost
done when my younger one graduates high school next year. Sometimes I'd bento
it up but usually more like sandwichtes and leftovers. I'm sure glad we don't
have any bento peer pressure here.

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sansnomme
The only reason why people are obsessed with bentos is because they are
pretty. Throw them together like your regular lunch sold at supermarkets no
one would find them interesting anymore.

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cbhl
Taking store-bought food and adjusting the presentation to make it look
homemade isn't a purely Japanese phenomenon. Even in the United States, frozen
apple pie sellers will tell folks to take the pie out of the aluminum tin and
put it in a glass or ceramic baking dish to make the pie look homemade.

I rather appreciate how the Japanese still care about how food is presented.
(I believe the idiom goes, "you eat with your eyes first.") I hope that in the
pursuit of gender equality, pretty meals don't get lost the way that they have
in the states.

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pfranz
> frozen apple pie sellers will tell folks to take the pie out of the aluminum
> tin and put it in a glass or ceramic baking dish to make the pie look
> homemade.

What's even more ironic is doing that completely changes how the pie bakes,
likely making the result even worse. Those heavy ceramic pie plates mean it
takes longer for the pie to get up to temp and cook, often means the pie
sticks to the plate, and makes it more difficult to cook the crust properly
along with the pie (you could prebake the crust, but not with a frozen pie).
I'm pretty sure most businesses use pie tins (foil is wasteful and
structurally a poor choice).

I guess the whole goal is perception and convenience, not necessarily quality.

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derefr
Perhaps they mean you should bake the pie in the tin, _then_ transfer it to
the baking dish.

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dwd
The minimalist approach of the matpakke is probably a lot better for parents
and childrens' mental health and stress levels.

Peer pressure is an unfortunate reality in society but so counter-productive.
Saw a similar thing with birthday parties in primary school where some mothers
were apparently reduced to tears due to the stress and pressure of wanting to
have the best party for their child.

Thankfully, after Prep & Grade 1 everyone was done with parties.

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malvosenior
I wish this article didn't just talk about the "shame society" in Japan but
also the culture of taking pride in your work and valuing craftsmanship. To me
that's what these bento boxes say a lot more about than the pressure to keep
up appearance. So many aspects of Japanese culture are finely done even when
the craftsman is anonymous or their work won't be personally recognized.

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neonate
" _It is easy for a non-Japanese person to shrug off this societal or cultural
pressure, but it is something that stayed with me all my life, even though I
have lived abroad for half of it._ "

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mikekchar
A healthy home-made lunch with a variety of different items in it is
practically a necessity for school children. I've seen teachers scold parents
for not providing a good enough lunch. However, where this article gets it
wrong, IMHO, is in asserting that character bentos are indicative of the
amount of effort that mothers spend on making lunches. It absolutely is not
(and I've seen thousands upon thousands of bento boxes to prove it -- to
myself, anyway ;-) ). It takes about 30 minutes a day to make lunches,
generally. This _is_ a long time especially when you add in cooking breakfast
as well. Many women get up at 5 am to make lunch for their kids/husband before
going off to work themselves.

Character bentos, as the article states, are _far_ from the norm. When you are
talking about people who think they need to make these, they are exactly the
same kind of people who are stressing out about not being able to keep up with
Martha Stewart's staff in the US. As far as I can tell, that pressure is
entirely self imposed. The vast majority of people in society completely
ignore it.

However, when the author states that there is societal and cultural pressure
to achieve a certain level, it's absolutely true. This is not just with
respect to women, but also with men as well. It's a double edged sword,
though. For example, with bentos, you have an entire country where in almost
every household you have at least one person who knows how to make healthy
food and who practices it every day. You have country of school children, all
of whom eat at least one home cooked meal every single weekday. You have no
opportunity to for big business to negotiate what's going to be included in
the school lunch because for the most part there is no school lunch. It is
objectively a good thin.

There is a price, though. Is the price too high? I'm definitely on the fence
at that. I used to make bentos and breakfast for my wife and I every single
morning. We have no children, but to be honest, making 2 or 4 bentos takes
virtually no extra time (and, in fact, 2 is sometimes difficult to manage the
really small amounts of ingredients you have to use). Of the things that
working women need to do for their families, this is probably the least
onerous IMHO.

