398 yen (about US $4.15)

1. Rice
2. Very small umeboshi (pickled plum)
3. Shoga (pickled ginger)
4. Macaroni salad (basically just pasta and mayonaise)
5. Potato Salad (basically just potato and mayonaise)
6. Spaghetti with tomato sauce
7. Scrambled egg
8. Parsley
9. Mini-tomato (1)
10. Red leaf lettuce
11. Lemon slice
12. Kamaboko (fish cake, 1 very thin slice)
13. Breaded and fried strips of chicken breast

It sounds like a lot of food, though obviously it isn't. Yoshie loves this soft of meal. I don't, particularly, but it seemed like a good idea, especially since I needed lunch for Lee and Aiko as well. They picked out their own bento.

The inclusion of a really wide variety of foods is probably based, in part, on the Japanese nutritional teaching that, for health, you should eat at least 30 different kinds of food every day. That makes a certain amount of sense, doesn't it? The more different foods you eat, the more likely you are to get at least some of every nutrient you need.