Higo Blog

This is great.

It's amazing how much MORE interesting and BALANCED these meals are than US food service slop. Do Japanese kids feel more loved because so much care goes into their meals? I mean, there HAS to be something that feels good about your meal not being a government afterthought.

I hope that doesn't sound sappy. I think that food and the way that it is prepared is a meaningful thing.

Keep in mind that this is not normal fare in Japanese schools- most kids get the Japanese equivalent of processed school lunches, but my school was lucky since it was cheaper to cook school lunch locally instead of subcontracting it out to companies trying to increase profit margins.

On a side topic, seeing a well made bento has to make any recipient feel well loved. In Japan, many wives and mothers wake up early every day and prepare a special lunch box for their kids or husbands to take to school or lunch, and these bentos can be stunning in their variety, combinations of food, themes, and the amount of time and effort that is put into producing them. Take a look, and you'll see what I'm talking about:
http://www.cosmicbuddha.com/adam/archives/000419.html

Regarding food being a meaningful thing, I can get misty-eyed after eating a carne asada burrito (or home made cooking,etc...) from my favorite restaraunt after being deprived of it for a little over a year. I'm one of those people who gets emotional (in a good way) over food.

I had actually read Anne Allison's essay ?Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus? on bento, in the book Permitted and Prohibited Desires which was cited in several of the websites that I researched. We had the book that contained that essay in the library that I work in.

I also thought that about the meals she prepared for her kids was great.

I wrote a (general interest) article on bento for the local co-op newsletter, and researched with these articles. I'm pretty sure that it was in that day's research that I found your brother's blog. I posted that on my blog a while back...
(here ya go).

though it's probably too facile for you, especially since the co-op is chock full of vegans, I made the recipes vegetarian/ vegan to please the peeps.

The Power Puff Girl bento knocked my socks off...Talk about the shiznit. That image has been my desktop wallpaper for the last two months!

I am obsessed with food, print media and packaging. So bento has become my most recent hobby, naturally! I have actually even begun to get REALLY into making variations of my own.

Yes, food presentation is important. I also appreciate good food writers (MFK Fisher, Bert Greene, Calvin Trillin, etc.)...though I must say that all I've read of Proust is a graphic novel on his life.

I do have to say that while I respect and admire France and French culture, I get really upset by the precise and withering cruelty of the well-heeled Parisian. I can appreciate the observations of food that is enjoyed on a highly-cultivated level, but I am also keenly aware of the scrutiny that is a large part of an all-encompassing appreciation of pleasures of the senses. I may own a copy of MFK Fisher's translation of Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste, but at the same time, after reading a collection of short stories by Colette, I am certain that she would have described me as a chubby, grimy peasant...if I could even have caught her attention at all.

I actually did a food zine about 10 years ago. It was actually a lot like pekopeko in scope & focus, if you've seen it, but I was the only one who worked on my zine. And it was done before I knew how to do letterpress, so I had all of these funky two-color toner copies.

Anyway, my bad on the tangent. There goes my lunch break! I really appreciate the thoughtful feedback...thanks!

It looks like you've really done your homework on this subject. I've never even heard of some of the authors that you mention (looks like I'll have to do some reading). Thanks for taking the time to write an in depth response.

When you mention the cruelties of French Culture, I assume you're talking about veal and how they force feed ducks for their livers. I agree that it's not very nice (however, I don't know whether the ducks actually mind being force fed. I guess I wouldn't want to be). One author who I really enjoy reading is Tony Bourdain. A Cook's Tour and Kitchen Confidential are both great books, and the TV show on Food Network is entertaining as well.

Over here, sometimes I see food that is so stylish or cute that I feel bad eating it. It's amazing to see how much effort people can devote to aesthetics, especially when they know it will probably be seen by only one person and immediately devoured. Maybe that's part of the appeal.

Actually, I meant human social cruelty.

I have worked (as a copyeditor & writer) for several vegan pubs, but I am a meat-eater. I love pate. Not that I eat it day in and day out, but I treasure the occasions when I do--usually no more than once a year.

I read Tony Bourdain's biography a few years back & enjoyed it, too. I'm less enchanted with his ongoing gourmet mysteries, which seem a little forced to me. I thought his Food Network program (the episodes that I saw before our cable provider dropped TVFN) were good, too. He is knowledgable & refreshing, but I appreciate that he has been through a few hard knocks.

The effort to please for the sake of pleasing (even if it's only one person, a child or a rushed commuter upon whom the aesthetic impact might be for naught) is what makes it even more profound, I think.

Wow, these look really good. Thank you for posting the pix.

Wow, this is really interesting. Right now I'm writing a paper for my Japanese class (all in japanese...im not that skilled) but I was looking up info on school life and this was really helpful for the lunch part. haha. It's making me hungry.