Cool Japan Reflection

Cool Japan - Bento

In the opening of the show we are introduced to the idea of the bento or boxed lunch and our hosts Risa Stegmayer and Shoji Kokami ask everyone from around the world to take out what they think is “cool” with the theme of bento in mind. Vincent from France goes first and shows everyone a chirashisushi bento which he finds to embody what a bento is supposed to be as it is a cold dish and bento are served cold. He also points out that it is very convenient for him. Next Peter from the U.S. shows more of a plate lunch style bento with chicken katsu rice, teri beef and a side of a spring roll and mustard. He really enjoys this bento because there is really good food in it and no vegetables. Mrinal from india goes up next and shows everyone a divided bento with fish and many different types of seafood, he enjoys this bento because there is a lot of thought put into it. Yang from china shows a ekiben or heatable bento and says that people in china do not like cold food so this bento would be the best for her tastes. Marilla from brazil and Mrinal agree with yang as they share this value that warm food is better for you. Eddie from the UK enjoys the little sauce containers that are in some bento boxes, Hailun from Mongolia shares the cuteness of a bento that she would cook for her son.

The show then goes into another segment and explores japanese schools and shows everyone on the panel what goes into cooking a japanese bento everyday. The panel then discusses the difficulty to make a bento everyday, especially for the parents of the children. After this segment they are shown a company in Japan in the Ota ward that makes 66,000 or more bento a day, the panel is surprised at how cheap they can make the bento and how ecologically friendly their business model is. They then reached the end of the show where they declared that the coolest thing that they presented on the show was the Bento boxes and the panel agreed.

Personally, I came into this video knowing quite a bit about bento boxes. In other words I didn’t expect to see anything new to me personally, however, I did discover that in Japan there was a service so rigorously paced and so economically friendly. It amazes me the meticulous nature of the work that they do at the bento company and how many orders they are required to fill everyday. What also amazes me is the amount of numbers that need to be crunched in such a small amount of time to find out the estimated needed bentos for each company. The statistic brought up by this company was 0.1% of food was wasted, this means out of 66,000 bentos served every day there were only 66 that went uneaten. This really surprised me and makes me think about places around the world where food is wasted repeatedly. One place that I can think of is the United States due to our large serving sizes and consumer mindset making food into a business instead of a lifestyle. In turn this results in billions of pounds of food waste