Random Picture 66

Pirates of the Caribbean 4 has opened in Japan, and one of my students has gone to see it. She said that she thinks the movies are popular because people seem to like pirates. I think it's because we enjoy seeing Johnny Depp lurch about in eyeliner. The movie's release has spawned more than banal chitchat between my students and me. It has also compelled Yamazaki bakery to release sandwiches that use the movie for promotion. This specimen is a crust-less white bread tuna curry number. I was afraid to try it, lest I find myself wanting to cake on copious amounts of eyeliner and stumble around drunkenly.

Variety Friday: Bento Cheats

Bento making is becoming a fad among a certain demographic. If you visit the food porn web site aggregates, such as Foodgawker, you'll invariably find regular entries devoted to lovingly framed shots of bentos made by folks both in Japan and foreign countries. Just a few such blogs are Happy Little Bento, Hapa Bento, and the queen of bento sites, Adventures in Bento Making.

If you read these English language bento blogs or just look at the pictures to admire their artistry, you'll get the sense that the time spent making bentos must be immense. Not only do people have to carefully construct little star-shaped bits of carrot or cut little bits of nori to make happy faces on their rice, but they also have to make all of the food that goes into the bento. I don't regularly read English bento sites, but on the occasions that I do look at them, all of the contents appear to be made by hand.

In Japan, it is far less common for people to make all of the components of a bento themselves. Many of the people who I've discussed the topic with have said that the meat and fish components in particular were purchased in an already completed state at the local deli or supermarket. In particular, few people have the time to make tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet), croquettes, or meatballs, all of which are popular bento fodder.

The picture at the top of this post is what I'd call a "bento cheat" food. That is, it is prepared food that is marketed and intended to be used as an addition to bento boxes. The little illustration in the upper left corner shows a mother and her two kids smiling at the addition of these meatballs to an artfully arranged bento box.

I bought these meatballs as part of a 3-pack of 65 grams (2.3 oz.) packets for about 200 yen ($2.32) at a tiny local market. There are 113 calories in a serving of 6 small meatballs in what is ostensibly "tomato sauce". You often find this type of meatball or a similar type of burger patty in a plastic pack sold as a bundle of three taped together.

I've had several different types of these throughout my stay in Japan. Most of them are not bad, but not really good either. The meatballs are always heavy on the filler and very soft. They don't taste much like meat as the second ingredient is often onion followed by breadcrumbs or some other cheap carbohydrate. The sauces are always bland and offered in very small quantities. The meatballs pictured at the top here are made by Marudai, which makes quite a few varieties of these types of foods. Though I would never buy these meatballs again, I've had a marginally better experience with a chicken patty version of this sort of thing.

From my utterly ethnocentric and subjective viewpoint, the fact that bentos are lovingly fashioned to look great, but sometimes filled with this sort of, quite frankly, less than mediocre food is a reflection of an emphasis on style over substance. I think it'd be better to spend the time preparing the food that goes into the bento than to waste it making happy faces on your onigiri (rice balls) or cutting your strawberries into tulips. Of course, I toss all of my husband's lunch components into individual Tupperware-style containers and cram the little containers into a big one, so what do I know about bento-making?

Lawson Value Line Chicken Rice

There is/used to be an interesting blog called "Konbini Life". You'll have to excuse my verb tense confusion because the blog is still there, but it is updated so infrequently that I'm not sure there's much life in Konbini Life these days. (Note: it was gone by the time I published this review, but was still there when I wrote it.) For those who don't know, "konbini" is what the Japanese call convenience stores like 7-11. I always loved the concept behind the blog because convenience stores are such a big part of urban life here. Many people augment their lunches, procure snacks in the midst of the workday, or outright buy meals at convenience stores. It's also where novelties and short-lived products go first so the sampling from such stores is always interesting.

Unfortunately, I believe Konbini Life's writer has succumbed to the what I call The Japan Times blog roll (sometimes slow) death sentence. It seems that easily one-third of the blogs featured on it start to seriously wither or die outright shortly after they show up on the list. Konbini Life has been removed from their technology main page list, but they were featured at one time (and the article about them is still there in the archives).

What does this have to do with Lawson VL (Value Line) chicken rice? Well, I think this type of product is exactly the type of thing which would be good to feature on Konbini Life or the venerable U.S. blog, Heat Eat Review. It's actually not a snack, but it's my blog and I'll feature the occasional frozen food or convenience food item if I want to. Fortunately, I rarely eat these types of things so they won't be showing up often and my body will be largely spared from frequent consumption of processed food.

The unadorned frozen rice with it's minuscule chicken particles (click to see a detailed picture).

This 180-gram (6.3 oz.) packet of frozen flavored rice was available in the small freezer section of Lawson 100, a cheap convenience store. I was having a busy day and had a little leftover chicken in the refrigerator and was too harried to mess around figuring out something to do with it, and not in the mood to just use the plain rice I have on hand. Note that I wouldn't choose to eat a packet of this "chicken rice" without extra chicken on hand as I know there won't be much meat in it. The picture above shows the frozen contents with the only identifiable nuggets of chicken circled.

I would never recommend anyone buy this and eat it as is as a meal since there is certainly not enough protein in it by itself. If you see identifiable bits of chicken in the pictures, they are my leftovers and not from the original product.

The gussied up rice with my leftover chicken layered on top.

The front of the package says that this rice is flavored with tomato, ketchup, and chicken. Though I'm not a huge fan of ketchup (I never buy it or use it as a condiment), I don't dislike it as long as it's cooked into something and the flavor is diluted.

After being cooked up and stirred around, the orangish oily coating stains the added chicken and it glistens enticingly.

Unsurprisingly, this smelled like ketchup. You can see by the color that there is a noticeable tomato influence. The ingredients list includes tomato paste, ketchup, onion, green peas, soy sauce, paprika, and onion extract. You can see lots of little bits of onion in it and about 8 peas. Interestingly, this is almost exactly as many peas are pictured on the front of the package. I wonder if someone was counting them.

Without my added chicken, this was not bad at all. It has that frozen food taste which seems to come along with such types of foods (their equivalent of new car smell, I'm guessing), but also has a tomato paste/ketchup flavor coupled with onion, garlic, and nicely savory but not too salty seasoning. Some of the subdued savoriness likely comes from soy sauce. With my chicken added, this was actually pretty serviceable as a small meal as the chicken adds heft, protein, and a better flavor and texture balance.

It was a little greasy, but it had good firm rice and the peas were firm and turned a bright green after I heated this for about two and a half minutes in the microwave. You can't really taste the onion as an individual part of the meal, but the peas are relatively flavorful when you get one in a bite.

There were 311 calories in this and I imagine that the whole meal came in under 350 calories with my chicken breast slices added in and I felt quite full. Note that I had this with a big glass of iced milk tea, but I think that the added fat (which made it a bit greasy) probably helps one feel sated even with a smallish, carb-intense meal like this. I will also mention that about an hour and a half later, this gave me heartburn, but that's probably from the acid in the tomato paste and ketchup.

I'd certainly buy this again under similar circumstances, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat it often, nor will I likely develop a craving for it. It made for a nice change of pace and a more flavorful pairing to my chicken than homemade rice from my freezer. It was also exceptionally cheap for a lunch given that the chicken portion probably cost about 33 yen (it was only about 1/4 of a breast) and the rice was 99 yen. However, it's not exactly the best balance without more vegetables or some fruit on the side.

Lawson Value Line Tuna Mayo Pizza

There's an excellent blog called "Heat Eat Review" which features frozen and ready to eat food reviews. I've often thought that such an idea would be interesting for Japanese frozen or prepared meals, but the truth is that there isn't much of such types of food around relative to the U.S. The fact that women tend to cook most of the time and housewives are still pretty common means people tend to get full and balanced meals rather than grab something quick. Also, the types of food that are available in this area tend to be expensive and of very poor quality. It'd require one to eat an entire meal of junk instead of just the snack size things that I review.

As I mentioned in a former review of a prepared ham and cheese bagel, I rarely buy prepared food, frozen or otherwise. The only time I tend to buy it is when I'm not feeling well and feel too tired or sick to cook. The night before I bought the Lawson's Value Line frozen pizza that I only slept about 4 hours, so I was ripe for an easy meal when I hit the local convenience store for milk. I found this pizza, along with a similar one called a "mix pizza" and decided to give it a go.


The pizza cost 100 yen (about a dollar) and is 14 cm (5.5 in.) in size. The entire pizza has 249 calories, which is what puts it into the "snack" range and not a meal. It comes in a plastic shrink-wrapped package inside of it's main plastic package. I guess they feel it needs the extra wrapping for freezer burn protection. The instructions on the package recommend that you cook this in the toaster oven for 5-6 minutes at 1000 watts, but I found that was not long enough for the cheese to melt or the crust to get a bit brown.


After cooking, the pizza smells odd. It has a bit of a tomato smell, but also a strange nondescript fishy smell which I associate with Japanese food. I'm guessing that smell would be the tuna. While the crust is your standard preformed crust, it actually has a little better texture than average. The outsides is slightly crispy and the inside is nicely chewy. The sauce is inoffensive, but not very flavorful. In fact, the main problem is that aside from the crust and the tomato sauce, there's very little flavor at all. The tuna is more of an aftertaste than an actual topping. The cheese is so sparse as to be undetectable as is the corn.


I should note that I had very low expectations of this given that it's very small and cheap, and frozen pizza in Japan is abysmal on the whole. The crust exceeded my expectations, but the toppings were about usual for a Japanese frozen pizza. This makes for a pretty nice "bread" if you manage to cook it just right in the oven. It really isn't much as pizza though. If you'd like a soft, warm pizza-flavored bread to go along with a salad or as a snack at tea time, this wouldn't be a bad choice. I'd say this is fine as long as you're in the mood for that and nothing more.