Inaugural Posting

To-to-ro, To-to-ro...To-to-ro, To-to-ro...

I've had that little ditty from My Neighbor Totoro stuck in my head for a whole day now. My father-in-law just returned from a business trip to Japan and brought me a TOTORO BENTO BOX (!!) all of my very own. After reading many, many bento blogs, I have ventured into starting mine own.

I've been bentoing for the summer (it was a summer research project of sorts about Japanese food culture) and kind of got hooked on it. I had been using a small Glasslock container for my bentos, which works ok. I felt kind of strongly about not using a plastic one, due to strange chemical things, but I love my new Totoro bento box, even if it is plastic. As far as I can tell, it's made of ABS, which is pretty stable stuff. But as I don't read Japanese, the bottom of the box could say any number of things...

Not for Use with Food

Contents Under Pressure, aim away from face

Limit, 10 Snakes

...or whatever else warning labels always say. More likely it says something like, "For use in microwave--do not put in dishwasher"

So, I have this great, new bento and am compelled to document my use of it (to fully accentuate its awesomeness). During my summer experiment I made 35 bentos, including 3 that were picnic-sized ones for kayaking expeditions. I only took pictures of some of them, but I will retroactively post those in subsequent postings. I have read enough bento blogs to know that pictures are crucial.

Another motivation for starting this blog was because I occasionally troll the internet for new bento blogs to read. I have a hard time finding new ones (since my obsessive researching led me to the majority of easily findable ones) so I thought I would create my own. Totoro Bento is the name of this blog because that's a search phrase I use a lot.