What are they eating at lunchtime in Japan or at neighborhood Japanese restaurants? A Bento Box lunch.

While exploring the globe for interesting recipes from countries far from our shores (which we can match in our own kitchens), this week we visit a Japanese city, any Japanese city, or your favorite Japanese Restaurant, to chow down on a Bento Box lunch. The Bento are the handsome lacquered boxes that line the shelves behind a Sushi bar. They’re what the Chef fills with daily specials for his steady customers and they’re in the lunch boxes Japanese children take to school. Let’s see what’s in ours.

Arigato (Welcome)!! That’s the greeting from all Sushi chefs at their restaurants. On the wall shelves behind his work counter are the Bento lunch boxes of each of his steady customers.

Normally, when a beautifully hand-crafted lacquer ware Bento has been filled, it contains rice, fish or meat with one or more pickled or cooked vegetables. Although you can buy a Bento in many Japanese stores, it is common for a Japanese homemaker to be the creator of those for her family, making one for her husband, others for her children and herself. For her kids, the Bento may be elaborately done in kyraraben style, which means it’s decorated with Japanese cartoon anime, characters from comic books or video games.

For an adult it’s more likely to be a "oekakiben" or "picture bento", with decorations of people, animals, buildings, monuments or pictures of flowers and plants.

The concept of the Bento is believed to have originated during the Song dynasty with its meaning being "convenient" or, of "convenience”. After WWII, the Japanese began to think of a Bento as we do today, a home-made boxed lunch or lunch served to a regular restaurant customer. Here, is an open Bento with the other wrapped in cloth for travel.

Like most things historic, the bento is traceable from a start back in the 5th Century, when people who worked away from home (hunting, farming, fishing or fighting) needed a way to carry their food. The first Bento was a small bag, hooked to a Netsuke button.

In the Kamakura Period (1185 to 1333) hoshi-ii, cooked and dried rice, was developed which could be eaten dry or boiled in water then stored in the small carry bag. In the Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568 to 1600) wooden lacquered boxes began replacing the bags.

The concept and the name Bento are credited to a military commander, Odo Nobunaga (1584-1632), who needing to feed the large number of people who inhabited his castle. He did it by handing out meals in containers.

In one of Japan's oldest records, Nihon Shoki's Chronicles of Japan, it tells of how falconers used feed sacks to carry their lunch when they went hawking. Ise Monogatari's 10th Century collection of lyrical stories, Tales of Ise, contains illustrations of travelers eating dried rice from a bag.

During the Edo period (1603-1868), Kabuki theatre attendees brought a Bento so they’d have something to eat between the acts. Makunochi Bento, small rice balls sprinkled with sesame seeds and assorted side dishes, became a popular theatre and leisure time snack. It still is.

The factors of food practicality and family entertainment came together in the Meiji period (1868-1912), with the advent of the Japanese railway system made commuting to employment a part of many people's lives. The first Ekiben ('station' bento) was introduced in 1885, offering rice balls with apricot or sweet picked radish wrapped in bamboo leaves. Riders ate them while waiting for their train or during the train ride. Ekiben proved a universal hit, becausethey’re still sold at Japanese train stations. Much more elaborate, of course, a lot more expensive.

The convenience of carrying a Bento crossed over to Japanese schools since early schools provided no lunches for students or teachers. In the Taisho period (1912 – 1926) aluminum bento lunch boxes came into vogue and but were immediately declared a luxury by some because of their silver-like appearance which they claimed, “reflected an unhealthful consideration of a student's wealth”. When the movement died, Bento became a norm for all students.

After World War II, when schools did begin providing lunches, there was an obvious decline in school Bento sales. However, with the advent of the microwave and the growing popularity of inexpensive disposable polystyrene boxes, bringing a lunch to school in either the throw away boxes or a home-made Bento regained their popularity. The same for Japanese worker’s lunches, with upper management people bringing a Bento which was both food box and valuable art.

In school lunch rooms, just as our kids do, Japanese children swap lunch box contents like Edamame (green soybeans) and Japanese Cucumbers. What they mostly keep for themselves are Teriyaki (marinated chicken, fish or beef) and Onigiri (sticky rice balls wrapped inside a sheet of Nori dried seaweed).

Finding pieces of sushi and packets of green spicy horseradish in their lunch box makes their day.

If you lived in Japan, here’s what you might find in your Bento.

1. Teriyaki: Marinated beef, fish or chicken.

2. Onigiri: Rice balls filled with Japanese Pickled Plums (Ume) covered with dried seaweed or sesame seeds.

3. Somen: Cold noodles in a sauce of soup stock, sweet rice vinegar, soy and sugar, served with grated ginger and green onions.

4. Nasu: Japanese eggplants. Smaller than western eggplants they’re prepared boiled, grilled, steamed, simmered, fried, or pickled.

5. Tamagoyaki: Breakfast for lunch. Either Sweet omelet strips or Fried eggs with Sausages

6. Kishu: fish soaked in vinegar, or shrimp, prawns, octopus or eel.

7. Renkon: Lotus root and boiled Burdock, wrapped in Sea Eel (Anago).

8. Takenoko: Bamboo shoots or steamed, boiled or pickled vegetables.

9.Gari Shoga: Pickled Ginger or Apricot, both believed to keep rice from going bad. They’re usually put inside a rice ball or on top of a bed of rice.

10. Desa-ru, deza-to: Dessert - usually a piece of fruit, often an apple or tangerine.

The Japanese believe that a well-balanced Bento should consist of 1:1 rice to side dishes, and side dishes 1:2 fish or meat to vegetables.

Aside from the highly prized lacquer boxes that are filled in Japanese restaurants or served at formal meals, other materials used today in Bento-making are different kinds of wood, either anodized aluminum or plastic. For kids, as always popularity is based on their latest fashion fad, such as the now popular cartoon figure 'Hello Kitty', which fills every corner of the consumer market, from school bags to a whole host of matching accessories.

Modern Bento are watertight and include internal cases for carrying liquids and units to keep foods hot, a far cry from those first 5^th century cloth food sacks.

Imaginative as the Japanese at adding style and variety to their foods, they are even more inventive in their beverages. For example, there are more than 30 styles of tea available from white to black. At least 40 different brands of beer are brewed including microbreweries, with the major brand names being Asahi, Kirin, Suntory and Sapporo. Sapporo Draft is my personal favorite.

A brew called Happoshu is a low malt beer. A new category called, Third Beer, contains no malt to avoid malt taxes.

Fruit flavored drinks come with and without alcohol. 28 brands of Sochi have alcohol levels from 20 – 40%. They’re somewhat like Vodka, but made with Rice instead of potatoes.

Sake brands number close to 50. Imported Wines from around the world including Sparkling wines can be had all over Japan, as can local Plum Wines.

Finally, for adults all the world’s major “whiskey” brands are sold as well as that made locally; Japans first distillery, Yamazaki, opened in 1924. Their whiskey styles are similar to Scotch and to American Bourbon, with the best known makers being Suntory and Nikka; each producing both blended and single malts.

As to soft drinks, what we get in our stores, they get in theirs, plus a few interesting others. One has the slogan, “Ahh, refreshing Coolpis”; it’s probably a soft drink offered to guests wearing blindfolds.

Actually there’s a brand copy-cat in Korea named Calpis, that comes either Peach or Kimchee flavored. Kimchee, which we wrote of a few weeks back, is that traditional Korean dish made from fermented cabbage and LOTS of red pepper. Imagine a comparison test between Calpis and Coolpis; that would obviously be a - pising contest. Sorry about.

You just knew the Japanese would have a number of translations for Bon Appetit. Pick your favorite: ”Douzo Meshiagare”, said by a chef to people he is about to feed. It means “Enjoy Your Meal”. Before a meal table- mates exchange, “Itadakimasu”, “Thank you for this meal” and after the meal: “Gochisosama Deshita”, “Thank you for a good meal”. For beverages, with glass raised, it’s “Kanpai”, "Cheers!"

Next week we’re back to pounding for our supper, but at a lovely mid-European restaurant who literally will cover our plate with a boneless cut of either pork or veal which has been thinned with a mallet, coated in bread crumbs and fried. It’s a most popular part of Viennese, Austrian and German Cuisine, the Wiener Schnitzel, However, if ordered in Austria and made with pork, it must by law be called Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein, or if it’s Veal, it’s just plain Wiener Schnitzel. Next week, we clarify all.