These stylish Bike Bento are fuel for motorcycle lovers’ eyes and stomachs.
From January 6-21, the 61st Original Famous Ekiben and National Delicious Food Tournament is being held on the 7th floor at Shinjuku’s Keio Department Store. This year’s event has already been extremely successful, with its first-week sales exceeding those of last year.
We went to the event this year with a singular purpose in mind: to sneak a peek at the Bike Bento, which are shaped like motorcycle fuel tanks and are usually sold at the Ryusei Kaikan roadside rest stop in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture. Generally speaking, the term baiku in Japanese refers not to a pedal-powered bicycle but to a motorcycle–so while the name Bike Bento may cause some confusion among English speakers, we’ll have to forgive that wrinkle for the sake of its smooth-sounding alliteration.
We made our way through the crowds of the event space until we arrived at the relevant booth with the Bike Bento.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that there was more than one design, including this bright pink standard one for 1,300 yen (US$8.24).
Other models came with adhesive stickers to decorate the bento box. These slightly fancier models, such as the anime-inspired Touring After the Apocalypse and Kamen Rider Cyclone ones pictured below, cost 1,700 yen.
There were also models paying homage to Sundance Enterprises, a famous Harley-Davidson customization shop in Tokyo, and to the motorcycle ridden by Eguchi in the Shonan Bakusozoku manga.
Finally, there were two boxes depicting the logos of motorcycle parts-manufacturers Moriwaki Engineering and Yoshimura. What an incredible overall lineup–and even better, all of them came with food inside.
It was hard to choose, but we eventually selected two to take home with us.
The stickers don’t come already applied, so the boxes were initially a blank slate. They still looked pretty cool like this. It was also easy to see how they differed slightly in shape.
Here are the two designs that we opted for–the red and white Kamen Rider Cyclone one, and the black and white Sundance one.
A fun touch on the Cyclone one was the copyright symbol for Ishimori Productions and Toei, which meant that this was an officially licensed product.
Here were the finished products after we applied the stickers. The process was a bit tricky, with the stickers not unpeeling from their backing very easily. We were especially nervous to get the gold lines straight on the Sundance one. Nevertheless, we persisted and were pleased with the results. The instructions also recommended applying them when the box was empty of contents and completely dry after using a mild detergent for the best results.
We couldn’t help but start humming the Kamen Rider theme song while admiring our work.
It was seriously the coolest bento box we had ever laid eyes on.
Meanwhile, the Sundance box was also a standout. The gold lines really popped against the jet-black background.
This one seemed like it would be perfect to display.
But these boxes weren’t mere decorations–they were practical containers for storing food, and had, in fact, come with a meal inside.
Both of them held pork, rice, a couple of green beans, and Japanese-style pickles.
The thick pork was seasoned with a sweet, miso-based sauce and really hit the spot after the intense sticker application. They weren’t just pretty to look at but pretty delicious as well.
Now that we have these fun and practical containers to use throughout the year, we can get back to reporting on serious issues of national security without worrying about what we’ll pack our lunches in.
Reference: Bike Bento
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