Judging you, Judging me

"Food should be prepared with the intentions of making it so delicious-looking you could eat it with your eyes"

The above quote from a Japanese Forum Newsletter, I believe accurately expresses the idea of obento. I believe the intentions of obento are well meant, but the resulting process to create a perfect product is a little extreme for my taste. I'm all for the creative and chimerical presentation of food...when it's being served to me. Like at those fancy-schmancy nouveau restaurants (0f which I rarely eat at). But if I'm making food for someone else, I can't say I put forth the same effort. I don't have the patience or the time for that, especially if I'm making it for a preschooler.

I found it fascinating that almost all Japanese mothers would spend so much time on making food for someone who is so young, and who in all honesty, probably wouldn't care what their food looked like if not for the cultural notions impressed upon them. They go to great lengths to make the transition from home to school easier for their child, and in turn both mother and child are judged on their performance (the former on the creativity and presentation, and the latter on the consumption of the entire obento). But from my point of view this seems to serve as a point of stress rather than ease. Of course, the obento serves other purposes such as teaching discipline and cooperation, which I'm sure produce excellent results.

I know that some mothers in our society spend time making bite-sized food for their children to entice them to eat, but they go no where near the lengths of these mothers (at least that i've seen). But we have taken the foundations of obento into our society and adapted them to fit the modern times i.e. lunch boxes etc. Two years ago I read an article in The Oregonian called "A Better Box Lunch" about packing bento-like boxes for children to get them interested in eating. The article presented a more reasonable approach to obento, for the mothers who don't have insane amounts of time and money to spend on their preschoolers.

I always had hot-lunch though, so maybe I'm a bit resentful.

P.S. The above photos are from our obento making project in class.