The art of... making the practical perfect

No other nation takes the packed lunch as seriously as Japan. ANNA HART recalls the lunchbox that changed her life.

- ANNA HART

The first time I was awed by another nation’s food was the moment I saw Naoko’s lunchbox. I was an Irish eight-year-old at an international school in Singapore, and before I ate lunch with Naoko, my new friend from Tokyo, I was happy with my wholemeal bread sandwiches, wedged alongside an apple inside a rectangular Friends of the Earth lunchbox. I unwrapped my squashed sandwiches from their foil, and Naoko deftly unclipped the lid of her Hello Kitty lunchbox, revealing various perfectly proportioned compartments containing tiny immaculately presented portions of food: steamed rice, tuna, cooked vegetables, purple and yellow pickles. A matching pair of pink chopsticks slotted neatly into the lid of the box. I’d never seen such state-of-the-art lunchbox technology. I’d never seen a lunchbox aspire to such soaring aesthetic heights of pink cuteness. I’d also never seen such meticulous compartmentalisation, such nutritional neatness, the box deftly wrangling food into order.

Packed lunches, in my world, were always a bit of a mess. A tasty, eagerly anticipated mess, but a mess, all the same. I decided Japanese lunchboxes were the finest in the world, the sort of highly functional lunchboxes that would be issued to astronauts on space missions.