BENTO

I’m going to talk a little about making lunchboxes (it’s called BENTO in Japanese) for my daughter.

Since I moved schools so many times and never got to stay in one place from entrance to graduation,
I always admired people who had childhood friends or lifelong besties.

That’s why I really didn’t want my daughter to go through the same thing—
so I enrolled her in a private school that goes all the way from kindergarten through junior high school. (It’s actually one of the top 10 most affordable private schools!)

This April, she started 9th grade (the last year of junior high school here),
which means she’s been with the same friends for 12 years now—some of them have been together since kindergarten.

She has what I always longed for: childhood friends.
It makes me so happy and grateful to see that.

…But yeah, that also means I’ve been making her BENTO for 12 years.
That’s a long time, right?

When she was little, around 2nd grade, we lived with my parents after my divorce,
so my mom helped with the lunches sometimes.
But ever since it’s just been the two of us, I’ve been doing it all on my own.

While working full-time, every morning I made her breakfast and lunch, cooked dinner at night, went to school events,
and accompanied her to swim practice and training six days a week. (she was a junior swimmer!!)
Total solo parenting—what they call “one-op” these days.

I was pretty serious about nutrition too.
I’d feed her things like stir-fried meat and veggies with soup first thing in the morning to help her grow strong…
and it worked!
She’s now 168.5 cm tall—and still growing!

Anyway, back to the BENTO story.

Honestly, I’ve never been good at making BENTO.
Even after 12 years, it’s still not my strong suit.

Just having that one thing I “have to do” every single morning feels super heavy sometimes.
(If you’ve ever packed BENTO, you totally get it, right? )

The sense of FREEDOM when school is on break or exam periods start and I don’t have to make lunch?
It’s unreal!!

Sure, after doing it for so long, I’m fast at it now, but I still think every day:
“Man, I can’t wait to graduate from BENTO duty…”

If my daughter reads this, she’ll probably say,
“Seriously? With THOSE lazy BENTO?!”

But hey, even if they’re not fancy, I’ve done my best!!
Every single day without skipping!!

By the way, I’m super happy right now because we have four days coming up with no lunch-making.
Writing this while soaking in that sweet, sweet freedom.

Oh, and my daughter says she always wanted to try having a school cafeteria lunch someday.
Yeah… I totally get that too.