“Bento” is now a common word. Tt’s been developing year by year, and finally it reached the new level: Kyaraben.
Kyaraben is an abbreviation for character bento, which is a character-shaped/designed bento.
Japanese kindergarteners do love opening their lunch boxes and seeing beautiful kyarabens.

Japanese moms are very dextrous. They work on it every single day.
I don’t think every mother has such strong artistic abilities, but they work very hard on meeting their kid’s request.

The above pikachu kyaraben is beautiful enough, but let’s see some of the most outstanding kyaraben made by Japanese moms.

Many bears and chicks. This is super adorable, but too cute to eat…

This isn’t a design of a character, but why don’t we call it kyaraben too!
Very creative and hilarious! The eater must be an engineer or something?

I am very curious about what kind of job the person who made this have.
It’s just way too elaborate, and ruins my appetite! Ewwww

Kyaraben has been very famous and popular among Japanese moms and children for about 10 last years. It has come out of mother’s love for their kids.
They try hard to get their children eat what they don’t want to eat such as vegetables, make their lunchtime more fun, and make them laugh even when they feel down at school.

It isn’t kyaraben, but “revenge bento” is also well-known.
The day after mother and her high-school-age son argue, the mother makes him a revenge bento like this.

It basically says “You should be sorry for what you’ve done”.
Only seaweed and rice… this is a typical revenge bento!
He should apologize to his mom or his lunch is going to be like this forever!
Nice action and love for him, mom!

If you are a man and in love with a Japanese woman, you ought not make her mad.
If you are a woman living in Japan, you might be ready to prepare kyarabens in case your future child will ask you to.