Today, Lunch Week continues with an exploration of the ornate and detailed world of charaben. Charaben is like a bento box on cuteness steroids. This trend from Japan is the creation of artistic pictures and shapes within the bento box. Basically, every lunch is a loving work of art. As opposed to yesterday’s post, today’s lunch idea is not for the rushed.
I think a lot of the creators take an artistic satisfaction out of their work; several seem to make charaben just for themselves. Others do it to express their love for their families and to entice their children to eat healthful foods. Rice is understandably a main component; it is astoundingly versatile for crafting these pictures. Nori or seaweed is another useful ingredient for making faces and lines. Many of the devoted mothers who make charaben create pictures of popular cartoon or manga characters with the food. According to Christopher Salyers, these bentos can take from 40 minutes to 2 hours to construct! Salyers is the author of Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Charaben and the blogger behind Face Food, a charaben aggregate site.
Ngoc, the blogger behind Cooking Cute, makes lovely bento boxes and I adore her picture calendar of lunches.
Ibii, a university student, makes charaben for herself and her boyfriend on Bentonoibii. Check out the zebra in bento number 12!
And finally, Flickr has dozens of bento photo groups. You can find some great examples of charaben mixed in with more standard bentos in the Obento, My Bento group. I particularly admire the ones created by lovej*. I also love the goldfish wieners made my maki, although I suppose one might find them a little eerie.
I’ve been saving a post about an Indonesian dish that makes a fun lunch. I’ve just put it up to go with your theme week.
Thank you for your kind comment about my bentos, it made my day!
I love bentos, esp charaben bentos!