Zojirushi Bento Box – a guest post from TJFKAK

*editors note:  Today we are lucky to have a guest post from TJFKAK, aka coughka.  She is a big time lawyer for a firm that covers things like airplanes, boats, helicoptors, and space vehicles.

Amazon knows me.  It’s f’ing crazy how well it knows me.  I was browsing through Amazon when I discovered the Zojirushi Mr. Bento Stainless-Steel Lunch Jar.  Given that I’m Japanese and a foodie, I pretty much drooled onto the keyboard while looking at it.  Using Japadamus’ SAT Analogy of black: crack as Jap:Sony, you can pretty much just substitute Zojirushi for Sony, too.  Everyone in my family has one of their rice cookers or hot water dispensers, and they cost at least $100 each.  The list price is $64, but Amazon’s selling it for $35 now, which is cheaper than a lot of less useful potential gifts.  Plus, you should really pack your lunches to save money, right?  Spending money to save money in the future is what makes me so smart. 
Anyhow, when it first arrived in the mail, I was surprised at how large the thing was.  It looks like it could be the size of a nuclear warhead (or at least the size of those nuclear warhead props they use in movies.)  But it comes with its own carrying bag (nice touch), that also contains a loop for storing chopsticks, which also come packaged in a plastic carrying case with the lunch jar.  Very Japanese.  It’s not too heavy, and if you’re not adverse to carrying a separate bag for lunch apart from your normal briefcase, it works fine.
Mr. Bento consists of 4 containers:  a soup bowl, a rice bowl, and 2 empty multi-purpose containers (small and large sized).   You can already tell that this was made for the traditional Japanese Bento form of lunches.  Anyhow, the soup container even has a gasket, which is amazing ingenuity for a simple thermos container.  How often does any lunch container have any mechanical piece more complicated than a handle or a snap lock?  The rice bowl is the largest container and has a swivel lock mechanism, which secures that your rice won’t go flying out.  The bad thing about these containers is that you can’t put them in the dishwasher.  Also  the two multi-purpose containers appear to be made of particularly thin palstic, so I’d be wary of actually microwaving them. 
The directions suggest putting warm water in the thermos and in each of the indivual containers for 2-4 minutes prior to placing actual warm food into them, and although I read other reviews saying that it was ineffective, it actually worked fine for me.  5 hours after packing my lunch, the food was still warm.  i haven’t tried chilling food in there, but the directions caution nto to pack particularly heat senstive foods in there, like milk and other dairy products.  I guess if you plan on having cereal in the mornings, it might alright since the milk won’t be sitting for too long. 
Anyhow, I really love this lunch jar.  It looks stylish, carries a lot of food and maintains the food’s temperature very well.  I lamely love showing it off at lunch. 
I do, however, have some minor complaints about it.  For an American lunch, it’s not very practical in that you either have to pack all hot or all cold things as there is no way to divide the thermos between hot and cold.  Also, it’s a lot of food, so if you’re expecting to eat it all for lunch, you’ll likely have a massive food coma after lunch.  It works better as an all day snack repository.  You also have to expect to be eating in a somewhat traditioanl Japanese manner — ie, no sandwiches, just actual food dishes.   Finally, because you should either warm or chill the containers before packing, it means that you have to  spend some time in the morning assembling all of this, which isn’t always practical if you’re the type who’s always running late to work. 
I’ve used this lunch jar a handful of times now, and I really enjoy it, but it’s probably not going to be an everday lunch jar.  I would definitely buy this again and as a gift for others, though since its form and fucntion are great.  You just have to expect to put a little thought into what you want to pack for lunch.