How to... make Kyaraben (Character bento)

In recent years, contemporary Japanese cultures are starting to penetrate the West. We often hear terms such as J-Pop, J-Rock, Kimono, Fire festivals, Cherry blossom viewing, Nitendo DS, Karate, and so on. If you have not know or heard any of these terms, then I’m sure you at least know about Anime and Manga, these are one of the earliest modern Japanese cultures that was introduced to the world and have been very successful indeed! NO!? you haven’t heard of Anime and Manga? Well… How about… “Pokemon?” Come on! Everybody knows Pokemon! :P

Apart from “Pokemon,” another interesting modern Japanese culture is the “Bento culture.” Japan has a tradition of home made bentos, a traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container. However, today we will be looking at how to make a character bento (Kyaraben), which is a style of elaborately arranged bento which features food decorated to look like people, characters from popular media, animals, and plants. Originally, a decorated bento was intended to interest children in their food and to encourage a wider range of eating habits. It has now evolved to the point where national contests are held.

Ok, enough said, let’s start an easy character bento!

Rilakkuma inari-zushi:

Food you need: 

- Freshly cooked rice: 3 cups of sushi rice. You will need about three Tablespoons of rice for each inari. 

- Inari skins: 4

- Seaweed 

- Cheese singles 

- Ham for Korilakkuma

Useful tools: 

- hole punch

- tweezers

- scissors

[For Rice]

Now it’s time to cook rice! It’s important to cook rice hard, that is, cook rice with less water.

While waiting, prepare vinegar mix:

- White vinegar 3 1/2 tbs

- Sugar 2tbs

- Salt 1 heaping ts

mix the ingredients and set aside.

Then, put freshly cooked rice in a wet bowl, pour about 2/3 of the mixture on the rice, and start mixing rice immediately with a wet spatula with slicing motion, folding the rice over from the bottom, so the vinegar won’t stay at the bottom.

If the rice is not soggy, add the rest of the mixture little by little. If the rice starts to get soggy, stop adding the vinegar.

Ta-da! Now you have sushi rice for sushi!

While cooking rice, you can go ahead and cut the seaweed. It’s so much easier and goes faster when you have the seaweed ready. Use the hole punch for the eyes, and the nose is an eye cut in half. Make sure the seaweed is kept dry until you use it.

[For Rilakkuma]

Put rice inside the inari skin. As you stuff the rice in, make sure you don’t over-stuff the inari skin and rip it. Put the inari on its side with the opening facing you. You can also put it on its side and have the opening facing away from you. Either way is fine, but it will look nicer in a bento box if you put the inari on its side with the opening facing you.