Tag Archives: shirasu

Kindergarten bento – Start of the new year (10/Jan/19)

10/01/2019

It is our daughter’s first day back at school in Tokyo after our wonderful Christmas/New Year holiday in Europe. We had a magical time, spending time with our family and close & new friends, away from home, making yet another unforgettable memories.

On our way home from the airport yesterday, we stopped at our local supermarket to replenish our empty fridge. It was incredible to see our daughter getting excited at the traditional Japanese ingredients she hadn’t eaten for the past two plus weeks. Despite her flexible palate, she must have craved for the taste from home.

For her first bento for the year, I packed shirasu, baby sardines, over freshly cooked rice, one of the very Japanese ingredients she eagerly requested.

Kindergarten bento – Behind the scenes (18/Sep/18)

19/09/2018

Today’s bento: Hamburger steak, Tomato omelet, Simmered carrot, Boiled broccoli, Shirasu (baby sardine) rice, Apple for dessert.  

I love my daughter’s kindergarten. It is a great school inside out, with kind and highly competent teachers, thoughtful educational philosophy focusing on Japanese culture and seasonality, and it even comes with the beautiful garden with a lot of green and soil on the ground instead of concrete (very rare for Central Tokyo). Apparently the bento is also part of their education, so that the kids would spend their important first few years of their lives, always eating healthy home-cooked meals prepared with love.

But there is no such thing as a perfect school, is there? Out of all the positive aspects of my daughter’s school, there is one characteristic that I just cannot overlook: they do not encourage women to go back to the workforce. They wouldn’t stop you from working (they can’t), but the head teacher publicly made the statement that they provide childcare, not for mothers to go back to work, but for the well-being of our children. They believe the physical participation of the parents (and in this context usually targeting mothers) is crucial during school hours, involving various events and activities organised by the Parents Association. Want to work full-time? Oh, it would be difficult if you want to send your kids to this kindergarten… etc., etc. How backward, my super liberal Dutch husband would lament. We knew this before enrolling our daughter, but both of us had this wishful thinking that this might change, or perhaps we could make a change…

What makes it difficult to do so, I came to realise, is that some fellow mothers are totally against working mothers as if to say working is a vice. Some mums voiced that “work” cannot be an excuse to miss school commitment, that there would be no special treatment, because kindergarten in general is not for people who wish to work.

In good old Japan we had a common understanding that women should protect the household and spend time with their children. Poor kids if mothers have to work. This is slowly changing but is still followed by the great part of the society. With my semi-international background I always have a slight sense of guilt for not working full-time, but now I have another layer in my guilt for working at all. Work, or not work, it surely isn’t an easy place for a person like me, and this, reflects the modern but undeveloped Japanese cultural state in my opinion.

Yet, I still love my daughter’s kindergarten. I can’t think of a better place for her to be despite the struggle. A part of me wants to make a difference and fight it, while the Japanese part in me just wants to conform or escape. I go back to my daily bento making, daydreaming that one day, some miracle happens to change people’s mindset for the better.

Kindergarten bento – School starts (Tuesday 4/Sep/18)

04/09/2018

Our daughter’s school resumed yesterday for the second semester for the Japanese school year (April – March). After a month and a half of summer break, she was so excited she got out of her bed in the morning and jumped up and down in delight.

Since May, I got very busy with my freelance job and didn’t feel like posting anything. But I decided to resume my posting, especially because my bento making obligation will only last for another half a year. Our daughter will start her elementary school in next April, which comes with delicious & healthy school lunches.

Salmon rice requested by my daughter, Tofu & shirasu (baby sardine) omelet, Leftover Shepherd’s pie, Boiled broccoli

Nashi pear for dessert

Kindergarten bento – 15 ingredients (Wednesday, 23/May/18)

25/05/2018

  1. Rice
  2. “Shirasu” baby sardines
  3. Kelp (konbu seaweed)
  4. Sesame
  5. Carrot
  6. Egg
  7. Tofu (mixed in omelet)
  8. Ao-nori (seaweed) powder (mixed in omelet)
  9. Pumpkin
  10. Chicken filet
  11. Okra
  12. Cucumber
  13. “Katsuo-bushi” bonito flakes (mixed with cucumber slices)
  14. Strawberry
  15. Banana

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Kindergarten bento – Okra & katsuo-bushi (Friday, 14/Apr/17)

14/04/2017

I found out recently that our daughter likes okra. Great, another vegetable in the list. Following yesterday, I packed okra again for her bento today. Just to give some variation, today I tossed the sliced okra with katsuo-bushi (dried bonito flakes), some shirasu (baby sardines) and a dash of dashi-shoyu (soy sauce mixed with broth). This goes great with white rice.

Menu: Okra tossed with katsuo-bushi, shirasu & dashi-shoyu, Rice, Mashed pumpkin & egg salad, Grilled salmon in saikyo-miso marinade, Cucumber sticks 

Strawberry & banana for dessert

Kindergarten bento – Accident (Thursday, 13/Apr/17)

13/04/2017

Menu: Steamed pumpkin & chicken soboro, Omelet, Tomato, Boiled okra, Wakana rice with shirasu (baby sardine) on too
Grapes & strawberry for dessert

My daily bento making resumed this morning for the new Japanese school year. I got up early, set the rice cooker, made omelet, took out other ingredients from the fridge I had prepared the night before, packed them nicely, got dressed while the rice was being cooked, packed rice, all nice and neat in the bento box, right on time, and everything was going perfectly.

I was about to sit down at the breakfast table when I heard this “pshhhh” sound. My husband opened the new can of Illy coffee with which he makes his espresso every morning. By the way, this Italian brand does great coffee with excellent flavour, and we both love it. It comes in this vacuumed packed, beautiful aluminum cannister. Anyway, looking over the kitchen counter to see if there’s anything I should take with me to the dining table, I noticed there was a spray of black pepper-like powder all over the place, including our daughter’s bento. Looking at each other’s faces in horror, we realised my husband’s coffee spilled out of the can with the air pressure and landed all over on the food. Oh…

My husband told me this had never ever happened before. Yeah sure, but how about the bento? I wanted to scream but held back… (got whiny instead). He then innocently told me to just wash it off and wipe a little. Yeah right. How can you wash omelet or rice or soboro pumpkin with water… How convenient if you can do that! To my dismay, I had to repack everything. As for the omelet I chopped off the top part (hence shorter than the original), for the shirasu rice I scraped off the top and added the leftover (thank goodness I still had some left next to the rice cooker not on the kitchen counter), and for the soboro pumpkin I had to put them in a separate bowl, carefully remove the ones with most coffee on them and put the rest back (I’m pretty sure some coffee was still hiding inside but at that point I couldn’t care less).

Voila, here is my daughter’s repacked bento for the first day of this school year’s bento making. I’d say it’s a great start!

* We love Illy coffee and recommend it to anyone who likes espresso. Just do not open the new can next to your food 😉

Kindergarten bento – Mmmm yummy! (9/Feb/17)

09/02/2017

At the kitchen this morning, our girl cheekily peaked at her bento of the day, and she said… “Mmmm, yummy!” It made my day☺️ 

It is endearing to know that she actually looks forward to her daily bento. It is worth waking up early to prepare the bento.

Menu: Grilled salmon & sesame furikake mixed in rice, Broccoli & shirasu omelet, Steamed pumpkin, Stewed beet root & veggies (from the soup I made the evening before)

Apple mousse & banana for dessert

Kindergarten bento – Artwork (2/Dec/16)

02/12/2016

Today, there was an “art exhibition” at our daughter’s school first thing in the morning, presenting all the artwork made by the children for the past ten months. In our daughter’s class, there were a number of mushroom-shaped paper canvas on the wall with colourful dots and hearts painted by the children, their pictures of a large decoration cake with their own illustration (our girl painted the cake pink, purple & yellow, drew 3 candles on it and above the cake 3 people with smiling faces, representing her family. *sigh*), etcetera, etcetera…

Among all of their hard work, the biggest achievement of all was….THIS.


They each made a bento box. It had two onigiri balls, tamagoyaki (omelet), cherry tomatoes and some lettus leaves. My daughter made her onigiri balls triangle. Some of her friends made round ones or even square ones, but she made triangle onigiri balls, because I always make them triangle. Because that’s what she knows and what she eats. In the classroom, Miss N thoughtfully prepared a table with a pretend table cloth and pretend chopsticks so that the children can “eat” their own bento artwork with their mummies and daddies. The table was immediately occupied, with the children so proud of their own achievement and thrilled to share their great creation with their touchy-feely parents. My daughter also excitedly pulled my hand to her bento art and presented it to me. I picked up an omelet and pretended to eat, while my little girl was anxiously waiting to hear what I’d have to say. I opened my eyes wide and said, “Oishii!! (Good)!”, which of course brought her a shy but very large smile on her face.

After the art exhibition (lasted only half an hour or so), the parents were excused, and the children resumed their routine of another normal day. I wonder what my little girl thought, at today’s lunch time, about today’s bento I prepared for her after sharing her art bento with me. Coincidentally it contained omelet and cherry tomatoes (well, I put them almost everyday actually), with the same colour codes. I wonder whether it came across to her mind that the tiny detail of her bento resembles mine, just like my bento appear to resemble my mum’s. After all, she looks at it, tastes it every single day at school. The colours, taste, smell, ingredients, presentation… all of these must affect all of her senses although it is not very obvious right now. I remember my mum’s bentos she made when I was a little girl. I was always proud of her bento, because it was not only tasty but also beautiful with cheerful colours, the type of colours reminding me of flower fields. I hope that my daughter also looks forward to opening her bento everyday, feels happy every time she opens the lid and has the first bite. The joy of bento making is the expectation of making someone happy. I’m sure one day my daughter will also prepare a bento for someone else, and I hope she will remember my bentos fondly, just like I do my mum’s.

Menu: Shirasu (baby sardine) donburi, Corn omelet, Stewed potato/hakusai cabbage/chicken in milk, Boiled green beans, Cherry tomatoes

Kaki persimmon for dessert

Spy any resemblance?