Box Lunch

So there's a take-out bento box store about  a mile or two from our house.  It's the perfect distance for a bike ride, plus you get lunch or dinner at the end.  Bento boxes are very popular here, they are basically box lunches, but really pretty/cute and with Japanese food in them.   Kids take them for school lunches so in the supermarket you see lots of cutesy bento boxes and cutesy food to go in them (kinda like Lunchables).

The place near our house is a Hokka-Hokka Tei shop....I think this is one of the most popular take-out bento chains in Japan.  For sure it is just about the only Japanese "restaurant" we willingly choose to go to on a regular basis.  It's tasty and easy to order (you can just point at the box you want and say "this one please").  Chad likes the fried chicken and I love the tonkatsu [tone-COT-sue] which is breaded pork with a really good sweet sauce.  The photo below is the tonkatsu one I usually get for dinner.

clockwise from upper left: Japanese pickles, rice with sesame seeds and a
pickled plum, tonkatsu with sauce and mayo, a fried chicken nugget, a sausage,
a fried shrimp and finally potato salad on the lettuce......basically I eat the meat and rice