other

Other bento stuff.

Bento archive list (1)

A list of bentos no. 1 to 30 featured so far on Just Bento.

Complete Bento Lists

Here on Just Bento, a Complete Bento article has a list of components with links to the recipes for each, an approximate calorie count, the time it took in the morning to assemble the bento, and in most cases a timeline graphic. Some Complete Bentos also have information on what bento box was used.

There are also several post with "also-ran" bentos, with brief descriptions and photos. Follow this link for the "also-ran" bentos.

Or to see all the bentos posted on the site follow this link for a list in reverse chronological order.

Copyright and usage terms of content on this site

Copyright and usage terms for this site.

A little site news: I've added a new search function to the site that will search both Just Hungry and Just Bento for your convenience. It's using Google Custom Search, which is a very easy way of setting up multi-site searches. (The results do show ads on occasion, but there's not much you can do about that in Googleland.)

How bento calories are calculated on Just Bento

Each complete bento presented on Just Bento has a calorie count. This is derived from the following information:

  • Official nutritional information labels on packaged foods
  • Online nutrition information databases, such as the ones at Calorie Lab and CalorieKing
  • English language nutritional databases often have inaccurate or misleading information about Japanese foods, so I rely on the official food nutrient database (五訂食品標準成分表) which is published by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and is the standard nutrition information text for dieticianss and other food professionals in Japan. (There are several consumer-friendly versions of this very useful publication available in Japanese. I use one with lots of cute pictures.)

Keep in mind that all calorie counts are approximate, since portion sizes may vary.

Most of the complete bentos (the numbered ones) are around 500 to 600 calories or lower. They can easily be made bigger or smaller just by increasing the volume of each component. (I frequently show larger "Guy" variations.)

Cup measures and weight and such

The capacity of "1 cup" varies from country to country, in a maddening way. In
the U.S. it's about 240ml (236.588238 ml); in Japan it's 200ml; in the UK it's 436ml. I use 240ml (standard U.S. cup measure) as an approximimate middle ground, especially for rice. If you are very concerned about every single calorie, it's best to invest in a good kitchen scale.

For a long time, I've been mulling over the subject of bento. Since Just Hungry is dedicated in large part to Japanese cooking, there are quite a few entries there of interest to bento fans, but I really wanted to make a site that was only about bento making, from my point of view. So, about 2 years after I first registered the domain and long hours of procrastination - I present to you Just Bento.

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