Character Bento

   Have you ever heard of bento? Bento means lunch box in Japanese. I’d like to explain more about lunch box called character bento or people called it Chara-ben.

  People make cute characters like animal, famous people or sometimes cartoon character for lunch box. The ingredients are just ordinary foods like we normally eat. For example, meat, vegetables and fruits or more less whatever they need in order to create the characters. You will notice that Japanese people use seaweed very often in making their bento. Why would they make bento as attractive as possible? Who normally eats it? Here is one answer I know. In Japan, most of children in kindergartens and many students in primary schools bring bento for their lunch to schools. As you know, it is hard to feed children; even if they have never ate it before. What mother wants is to have their children eat healthy foods. So they try to make bento more interesting. It is not easy for mothers to make chara-ben interesting. After many trials and errors, some mothers created blogs in how to make chara-ben to help others in making a good chara-ben.Nowadays, chara-ben doesn’t just make children fun, also it made mothers go crazy. Because mothers have made chara-ben as their hobbies and they enjoy in sharing their knowledge about bento with others. 

   Chara-ben is such a wonderful lunch box. Because when children open the bento, many colorful foods attract them and it makes them eat more. Sometimes children do not know what are the ingredients . Because they just love the funny decoration that is on bento. By the way, not all mothers in Japan make chara-ben. But many mothers do. 
    
Chara-ben is not just a lunch box. It makes people enjoy eating and feel happy when they see it. It would make people eat more and more. So, if you have the opportunity to try, I really recommend you to eat it and I am pretty sure you will love it!!