Ekiben guide

Helloes,
I saw a documentary on ekiben and was thinking if there are some english guides on where to find some interesting ekiben?

Appreciate your help.

There's a shop inside Tokyo station that sells ekiben from all over the country - it's called Ekiben-ya Matsuri:
http://www.gotokyo.org/en/tourists/topics_event/topics/121001/topics.h...

Here's a bit more info on ekiben in a few areas: http://www.japan-rail-pass.com/japan-by-rail/travel-tips/east-ekiben

There's at least one website devoted to ekiben. I found it via google some time ago.

Thank you for your ideas,
The Tokyo shop seems cool (if you only go to Tokyo during the trip), but it feels more genuine experience to me if buying the ekiben during a long side trip and eating on the train. I will be making some travel from the north to south and if there are stations along the way with interesting ekiben I would be hapoy to stop over and try it.

I found one ekiben page (lost the link, will try to find) but it was too hard to understand with my limited language skills, even with google translate. Not sure where to turb as ther seem to be no big english guides..

this is a pretty good english language webpage with a list of ekiben from various areas of Japan:

http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2009/02/ekiben-station-lunch-box.html

Thank you so much for the links. How could I miss that one? So embarassing. A lovely little guide. Thank you!

Googling "ekiben guide" got me to:

http://jp-hotnow.com/en/detail/jphn_his059_02.php?category=gourmet

http://gojapan.about.com/od/restaurants/tp/top_ekiben_train_bento.htm

http://jprail.com/destinations/ekiben-boxed-meal-in-the-train.html

http://www.att-japan.net/en/culture/guide/EC000110

http://justbento.com/handbook/bento-culture/all-about-ekiben-japanese-...

http://www.japan-rail-pass.com/japan-by-rail/travel-tips/east-ekiben

http://shizuokagourmet.com/ekibestation-bento/

Looking through my stored favourites I found this: http://www.nre.co.jp/ekiben/ which used to be available in English, but appears no longer to be. However, it translates OK in Chrome, at least enough so that you can see which towns/regions do which bentos.

Unless you're going to search out specific bentos, and you let that dictate your travel plans, then you could just:
- turn up to the station a little early, so you have browsing time (you get more choice on the station as opposed to on the train)

- (assuming you're travelling with a JR Pass) think about whether it's worth stopping very briefly in a particular station that you might be passing through, and catching the next train, thereby giving yourself a short period of time to buy the local speciality bento before carrying on with your journey. I've never gone to quite those extremes, but I was once quite keen to try the Nagoya eel bento and so made sure that we had 45 mins there while changing trains as an alternative to scheduling a 5 min change, in order to give me chance to buy that bento. (It wasn't all that good, to be honest, but I really wanted to try it).

You don't have to be in a Shinkansen station, or be in some remote train station in Japan to get Ekiben obentos. Major supermarket chains like Seiyu occasionally offer them (maybe once a month). Usually it's a selection of a dozen or so, but they are legit. I've seen the clamshell one from Chiba, the octopus one from Mihara, and the Yokokawa one with the earthen clay pot.

So you could be driving a rental car thru a dinky town in Gunma, stop off at the Seiyu, and buy Ekiben obentos.

In fact, I don't care for the selection at Shinkansen stations. They don't really sell the arcane ones. To me, the best one from Yonezawa was the one with cubed pieces of beef on a stick. Ueno Station used to have an Ekiben place that sold them, but I was there last year and the place is long gone. It was usually sold out by noon. Now you'd have to go up to Yonezawa to get it.

During my numerous train travels across Japan, I have tried many different type of ekibens . I like to share my favourite : Mashu station , Hokkaido, black paper pork ekiben. If you could not get them in the station, just step outside , the restaurant is just in front of the station.