Ekiben
The Complete Field Guide to 250 Japanese Station Bento — Where to Buy, What It Costs, and the Story Inside Every Box
- AuthorAki Wakamatsu
- PublisherTakikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC
- CategoryJapan Guides & Culture
- LanguageEnglish
- ISBN1990000144356
- FormatEPUB ebook
About this book
The other ekiben book teaches you to cook twenty of them at home. This one helps you buy 250 of them where they actually live: at the station.
Ekiben: The Complete Field Guide to 250 Japanese Station Bento is the buy-it-there guide to Japan's station bento. All 250 entries — from Mori's legendary ikameshi and Yokogawa's kamameshi pot to Hakata mentaiko, Kanazawa's Kaga samplers and Uwajima's tai-meshi — use one traveller's format: the station, where in the station to buy it, an honest indicative price band (checked November 2026), typical selling hours, what is inside, and the story of the local speciality inside the box — the port, the farm, the castle town or the postwar diner that put it there.
Twenty-three entries are full-length Icons: the longest-lived ekiben in Japan, written up from verified station-by-station research, with photographs. The book opens with everything a first-timer needs — what an ekiben is, how station shops work, self-heating boxes, summer food safety, and the true state of Shinkansen trolley service today — and closes with a complete station index, so you can plan a journey around lunch, or lunch around a journey.
Recipe books end at your kitchen door. This one starts at the ticket gate.
Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.
