In my brief absence (I was trotting through parts of Japan, doing serious bento research - honest! ^_^;) I've noticed quite a lot of new visitors to the site again. A lot of them are coming from this post on the New York Times Diner's Journal blog by Samatha Storey, who wrote an article last year which helped to bring homemade bentos to the attention of a lot of people. There are also people coming from various forum threads, such as this one on Ravelry.

I could point all the new visitors and potential bento fans to various Getting Started articles here as I periodically do, but I've already done that over on the left sidebar (points over there). So instead, I thought I'd turn the microphone over as it were, to all the current JustBento readers and bento veterans. Tell the new people, why do you make bentos? What articles on JustBento do you find particularly useful? Which recipes do you like? What other useful bento sites are out there (self-linking allowed)? Help to evangelize the cult of bento! ^_^ Also, please let them/us know who you are (e.g. graduate student, full time mom, athlete, lawyer, etc), where you're from (town/state/country etc) and general age, just so people know what kinds of people make bentos. (I know we've had posts like this before, but I plan to keep this at the top where new visitors can find it easily.)

For myself, I think the one post I'd point to to read first might be my Top 10 Bento Rules. And then the Bento Basics section and our friendly forum!