Charaben is a kawaii bento!
Date: Nov 14th, 2008
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Kawaii is not only for goods or anime, but nowadays it’s found even inside the lunch box! “Chara-ben”, or character lunch box is mostly made for kids. When a mom bothered with her kids’ having difficulties in eating veges or not having fun for eating, she tried to make a lunch box with as much fun as possible to attract her kids. This is how chara-ben is born. I don’t have kids around, so I have no idea how common it is in Japan to let kids have chara-ben for lunch, but there are instructions available at hand how to make chara-ben by books, by TV program, and also convenient tools are often introduced to help mom to make chara-ben easier. |
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Here is one example that I happened to find in a flyer from grocery catalogue.
The “face” is made from seaweed, not just a black paper (^_^;) To me, it’s kawaii, but rather tiresome to make something like this every morning for kids, even if I were a mother. But there are actually many moms who enjoy themselves making chara-ben. |
That’s because chara-ben deserves art works? Who else in the world takes long time to make such elaborate lunch every morning? Japanese moms who are into chara-ben are awesome…I don’t think I can be like that. I’m very curious how this is considered or viewed by people from other countries.
