Lunch Box

The other day, I picked up a free newspaper at a train station. Scanning through it, I found an interesting article in there. It said that recently the “lunch time situation” in Japan has changed a bit. According to the newspaper, more and more single males bring their own packed lunch to their offices. We assume that only females and married males would bring their “Bento boxes” but now young single males have started to bring them to work too. I am going to tell you about males who eat in their lunch room in their office buildings (“Bento-ha”, a subculture of Bento people).

First of all, a Japanese Bento needs a special box. Lately there is a bit of change in sales: a sales assistant of a large department store said “Recently more males come & buy them”. When I went to a nearby super market, they were selling these boxes as “Buy 2 and get 10% off”. The boxes come in a lot of different shapes and sizes: for females, there were some that come with special bags for each and they were around US$45, which was a big difference in prices when compared to the US$9 males’ simple 1 layer job. The same assistant said “Definitely certain types of the boxes are more popular than others among single males and they tend to just put cooked rice in there or with 1 simple dish. They do not need boxes with different layers, not like females. Men usually choose the most simple ones.”

So men are happy even when their lunch comes in plastic tupperware as they are after practical things. But then why now are they buying these boxes?

To this question, the assistant concluded her own analysis like this: “Surely they are affected by the recent recession and also last year’s Eco boom has played a part.” It may not be so unfashionable to carry your own packed lunch any more.

Looking around, half of JPC’s staff is Bento-ha and so am I. (Mine is a simple 1 layer box.) The reason why I bring my own lunch is that I live close from home so it is easy to bring one and that I do not have enough time to go out at lunch time. Because I can keep working while eating lunch, I always take my lunch box to work. However, the biggest reason will be that my two children both have to take their own lunch to school, so my wife can make my one without much extra work. (It might have been a different story if I was the only one.)

Being asked, one of the male staff who recently turned to Bento-ha said, “Oh, I want to save money and I am also watching my health. If you eat the same thing everyday, it cannot be good. ” Modern man tends to save where he can and spend heaps on his hobbies. They do not buy cars if it is going to cost them heaps but it seems they have the same attitude in their lunch situation.


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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
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