Onigiri and Bento

I'm sure you know the saying, "When in Rome...". Well, when in Japan...

I decided that part of the living in Japan experience should include producing and eating Japanese food and meals. This week, one of our experiments was making Onigiri.

Onigiri are rice balls compressed into a triangular shape with a strip of seaweed wrapped around it to keep fingers clean.

We learned one valuable lesson: storing them in the refrigerator overnight dried out the rice. Next time we will make them first thing in the morning so they can go straight into Dave's bento box.

Bento boxes are what Japanese lunches are packed into. Dave has a manly black Thermos bento that we bought at the Seiyu. The first lunch I packed him was such an American bento: roast beef sandwhich, carrot sticks, ranch dressing in a pig shaped container, and Fritos.

The next bento I packed for him was a little bit more Japanese:

Onigiri, soy sauce in the pig's head, carrot sticks, celery sticks, cheese, and 5-spice powder chicken.

And for those who want to know, I have 2 new mini sushi sets!

Octopus and California Rolls!

And here's a picture of all the sushi together. (Well, not all, there are 7 more sets to get in order to have them all.)