Some thoughts on obento here in Japan!

For me if I was living in the US. I'd happily let my kids buy school lunch from school every single day! Ha ha ha! And with B's last school. They made lunch twice a week, which the parents paid for of course. I liked that because I only had to make obento 3 times a week. Ahhh, those were the good ol' days! This school is strange because we have to make obento every single darned day! It gets tiring. And plenty of times myself, I think whoops, I better not make that again, I made those chicken cutlets 4 days ago, better not use them again. Sigh, lol. It is pretty hard. I wish this school would provide lunch twice a week at least and give me a break! When I first started with my obento's. I made a billion mistakes. I used chips in my obentos for 1 week until the teacher told me different. And she told me after school let out and all the other mom's heard I used chips since they were all standing within an ear shot! Meanwhile the teachers told me, chips are junk food (hmm we used chips in sack lunches in the US, again it was a different story here) Got yelled at/in trouble about it! They said jello is fine, well okay. And I mistakenly bought giant adult size jello and sent my child to school with them and Branden told me, mommy she said "my jello is too big!" Poor B, got reprimanded for my mistakes in obento making 101!!!! Whoops got in trouble about that too! My first year, I got *so* many complaints from the teachers about all the hundreds of mistakes with my obentos! Many times I was practically in tears while I picked up B from school! Seemed everyday I'd pick up Branden they'd say something was wrong with my obento!

I wondered if they just had it out for me or what! Which of course they didn't! It was just I really had no idea about obento at all! I checked online and saw hundreds of Japanese women's obento sites, I bought obento books. But they were really more suited for Japanese mom's. Not a novice American mom at all. Or for a hafu child with very western tastebuds. There was no website for fusion obentos. I learned everything the hard way. From utter scratch.

What is right? What is wrong? The first time I heard some mom at the last yochien tell me, yeah you gotta have all colors in that obento" I thought what the hell is she talking about? Seriously? WTF? And I pondered does one really seriously need all that color in a lunch anyway? Is it for making rainbow poopies or what? Not to be a smarty about it, but yeah I had one heck of a time with obento making.

And obento making for a western women starting from scratch. Hard as hell!

I realized leftovers are your new best friend!!! And don't be intimidated and at first I really was, I won't lie. For me, I try to blog as much as I can about my fusion obento making, because I know so many western mom's who live in Japan read this and they are either with kids or will have kids someday and I put this here to help. It can be referenced, anytime. I only wish I had this for myself when Branden first started yochien, it would have helped me a lot. If anything it gives you tons of inspriation and then you set off on your own path and get your own niche. But I really want to take the sting/intimidation out of obento making as a westerm mom. And hopefully I do that! : )