I'm reading Conscious Style Home by Danny Seo, who says bento boxes "are excellent for storing small office supplies, like highlighters, rubber bands, and small stocks of Post-it notes. And since they're stackable, you can layer several bento boxes neatly on your desk."
One place with a fun selection of bento boxes is JBOX.com. Many of the boxes, including the two above, have images of Totoro.
There's another nice selection at I Love Obento; I particularly like the flying cat.
Here's a colorful option; these boxes are made of melamine. Although the company calls them bento boxes, they seem to be more like tiffin carriers - but no matter, they'd still serve as good storage.
Unica Home has some colorful lacquerware bento boxes.
And then there are the lacquerware versions with patterns involving fans and flowers and butterflys.
I'd never seen a bento box like this one before - it's made of cedar. (Scroll down on that page; it's at the end.)
For more wonderful bento boxes (many of which aren't quite as easily purchased outside of Japan), see Just Bento.
oh I love this!! Here we call them tiffin carriers and you can get allllll kinds. Great for take out cos you can hand them to the restr and they just pop em up.
ReplyDeletelove it! saves on all lthose plastic and styrofoam containers :)
Angelia,
ReplyDeleteMost people in the U.S. don't know what a "tiffin carrier" is, so you sometimes see them sold under different names. To-Go Ware calls theirs simply a food carrier.
But places dealing with Asian food sell them as tiffin carriers: see this this 3-tier one, this 4-tier one, or this different 4-tier one.
But I'm not seeing the variety you'd get in Malaysia - nothing like this one, for example.
If you feel inspired to send me pictures of some prettier or more interesting ones, I'll use them in a future post.
ahh ok :) consider it my mission :)
ReplyDeletemostly stainless steel ones but there are some "antique" and special ones for kids.
will search around :)
http://cuddlyfamily.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/what-is-a-tiffin-carrier/
ReplyDeletedid a wee bit of searching!
will try and take pix if I see any cute ones!
Hi Angelia,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the follow-up post on your blog.
I guess if I went back to Melaka I could find a cute one, based on this post.
I loved this post! Imagine my surprise when I see the beloved Totoro on the bento boxes. *girlish giggle* Being a former exchange student (to Japan) and having been married into the culture, I love your idea of using bento boxes for organization. Duh, why didn't I think of that?
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff, Jeri, as usual. ;)
Glad you liked it, Brandie! (And how neat to learn that you were an exchange student. My fellow organizers sure have interesting backgrounds!)
ReplyDelete