Being an otaku, it's not strange for me to crave for Japanese cuisine and wanting to get the feeling of an anime school student.
Preparing a bento lunch is very exhausting, the steps are listed below:
1. Research and Planning
2. Buying the ingredients and stuff from the grocery
3. Food Preparation
4. Cooking
5. Packing
It's a very complicated matter for a student like me who lives in a country where general groceries open at 10 am and the school starts at 12 o'clock, school ends at 7 pm and groceries closes at 9pm.
The heavy traffic after school won't give me anymore time for grocery shopping.
I was just actually waiting for the right timing when there's a whole day event. I failed twice before, but just today I did it! and ate my first bento in the school.
The first attempt was when I've done the grocery but failed to have the time to prepare and cook the bento and decided to make tuna sandwiches instead. The second attempt was when I failed everything else except for the packing, that's when I just bought the lunch from 7-11 and just wrap it with furoshiki.
Today's a lucky day indeed, I did it and ate it all in less than 5 minutes without water, it's a medium sized meal with a 1:1 ratio of rice and side dishes, unfortunately I wasn't able to fit in the vegies that I've also prepared.
How I did it is the question. Well, it really needed a lot of research from the internet, and I'm very grateful for About.com and Wikipedia.org.
So I had to decide what dishes I want to eat and list them down. First thing that came in my mind was the octodogs! then onigiri, gyudon, chicken nuggets, veggie salad and stir fried bean sprouts.
So I still needed to buy them and the bento box. It so happened that there are several Japanese thrift shops in our area, selling all item in 66 php to 88 php!
Yesterday, I got out of school earlier because nobody wants to mess with me and the guard is such a sucker, nah it was legit. I had the time to go shopping and did so. Today, I woke up at 4 and started preparing and cooking and ended around 6:30. This day was not one my regular school days but it was a whole day and had to attend in the morning so a bento was necessary.
What's in it are the following,
- 4 onigiri cubes
- 5 octodogs
- Gyudon topped with pickled relish
- stir-fried bean sprouts or togue
After the lunchbreak had started, butterflies also started to appear in my stomach helped with a slight hunger. I really wanted to eat alone but decided to eat in the school cafeteria anyway.
As I gobbled up my food with silver chopsticks, I can sense these weird stares on me from others. Finally, I finished my food and went out the cafeteria and heard somebody yell at me from inside, "Konichiwa!".
What a weaboo, I am.
