It Makes the Rice Taste Good

Those of you who follow me on twitter can vouch that I’ve been obsessed with magewappa bento and I spend way too many hours RT-ing photos and links to photos of other tweeter’s magewappa obento.

I find them beautiful and intriguing, but I didn’t fully understand…  why one would choose a wooden bento above other options?  I didn’t realize their potential until I purchased one for myself.

Before I made the “splurge” (yes,magewappa is spendy) I asked a magewappa twitter-er why they use a wooden box. The answer was a short and simple ” it makes the rice taste good”.  This concise reply wasn’t just because of Twitter’s message size restrictions.  It was the perfect response and it lay to rest my hesitation to invest in a magewappa of my very own.

“It makes the rice taste good”.  The words stuck in my mind while I waited for the package to arrive.  I had big plans on my new magewappa’s inaugural lunch. Besides rice…white rice… what other foods would be enhanced by the smooth and fragrant cedar wood? 

Before the day that the box arrived I went round and round on potential menus.  I visited and re-read Maki’s Just Bento article about magewappa a few more times.  Two weeks passed since delivery and I still hadn’t committed.

I persisted in viewing the daily magewappa bento photos on twitter.  And I continued to  gently remove  my new magewappa out of the carton to inspect it over and over again.  It sure smells nice and it’s amazingly lightweight.  I really wanted to pack an interesting bento? not just for taste,  but for the blog too.   And  you thought I was addicted to bentos before this,  holy smokes it’s now a full-on  obsession.  :)  

After the 10th time of  re-opening the box.  It dawned on me…the rice!  It’s all about the rice!

So I settled on doing a classic hinomaru bento…white rice with a juicy red umeboshi in the middle.  Nothing else.  A perfect choice for my first magewappa bento lunch.

It would be very cliché to end this article with … “and you know… it did make the rice taste good”… 

But it did, it really did!