A BENTO is a good-for-one takeout or home-packed meal common in Japan. While it traditionally makes use of containers that range from mass-produced black-and-red-colored ones to handcrafted lacquer ware to hold rice and fish with some side dish, today?s bentos are more creative, using colorful and various-shaped containers.

Here are some blogs that pay tribute to these handy-meal masterpieces.

Eat my Bento?share bento recipes and tutorials
http://community.livejournal.com/ eat_my_bento

This community blog features pictures of bento box lunches?though they?re not limited to Japanese food. Expect to see other foods such as fruits, chocolates, pasta, cheeses and hors d?oeuvres inside plastic containers. There are also posts on tutorials, cute bento boxes, supplies and recipes.

Bento Challenge
http://community.livejournal.com/bentochallenge

This site?s come-on is its challenge to community members to make their own bento boxes according to a particular theme every week?from animals to animé, from Halloween to Valentine?s Day. The themes result in visually stimulating bento-box masterpieces.

Jacket Lunch Box
http://jakeben.blog111.fc2.com

One of the most visually interesting food blogs in cyberspace, this site features bento boxes that recreate popular album covers. Using ingredients such as egg, rice and seaweed, the bento boxes channel the albums of artists such as Madonna, Incubus, Prince and Rage Against the Machine.

Outstandingly accurate recreations include the ?We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things? album cover of Jason Mraz, the ?Voodoo Lounge? album cover of The Rolling Stones and the ?One Hot Minute? album cover of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The site is in Japanese, but that shouldn?t be a problem since all you really need to look at are the images.

E-mail the author at ninomarksablan@yahoo.com