A cartoonist mum has been hailed as making the world’s best packed lunches for her son – including sandwiches cut into EMOJI shapes.
Artistic Kokoro Kimura started making the incredibly-detailed lunches for son Kenzo Kimura Sørensen to take to nursery a year ago.
She makes the incredibly detailed snacks including Hello Kitty shaped sushi, cheese sandwiches shaped like Pokemon and Finding Nemo noodles and fish.
The colourful dishes take her between ten to 40 minutes each to construct, and she admits she’s “hooked”.
Designer Kokoro makes the pack-ups to encourage Kenzo to eat new foods and stop him becoming picky, and said his friends gather around to check out his meals.
His favourite is poo emoji sandwiched and cookies – which his mum puts in homemade poop bags.
She also turns strawberries into rings he can wear, oranges into jewel covered cupcakes and Peppa Pigs from real ham.
Arty Kokoro from Aarhus, Denmark, said: “Charaben is a phenomenon in Japan and I was fascinated when I saw pictures.
“When I finally got my own son, I decided to make it for him at daycare.
“It was a huge success – he loved it, his classmates loved it and even his teachers.
“They took his bento and walked around the classroom to show other kids.
“I was hooked.
“I wasn’t sure if Japanese fun bento lunches would be accepted or whether people would think it was strange, so I was a bit nervous.
“I didn’t want my son to be picked for being different.
“But everybody said ‘wow’.
“Local kids encourage me to make more.
“I make them one or two times a week and it’s actually for his afternoon snacks.
“I wanted to help my son to be curious of good food, and help him eat all sorts of food.
“I don’t want him to become bad picky eater when he grows up so I wanted to teach him to think ‘food is fun and tasty’.
“Kids are very visual. They really appreciate when food looks fun and pretty.
“I love it when kids at his kindergarten come to me and ask ‘Can I see Kenzo’s lunchbox? can I see?’
“My son, he laughs or smiles when he opens the box. It’s a pure pleasure to see kids smile.
“He’s three and a half so loves poop and ghost characters, as well as vehicles, airplanes and some Japanese anime characters.”
Charaben is a style of elaborately arranged bento – Japanese boxed lunches – which feature food decorated to look like characters.
Kokoro top tips for making her creations are to use cookie cutters, and she even makes her own to speed up her morning routine.
She recommends including as many different coloured foods as possible.
She added: “Some parents ask me ‘oh my gosh that must take a long time to make’ but parents spend time to their own hobbies like yoga or knitting.
“Well, I make bento – it’s my hobby
Kokoro documents are creations on her blog: funkawaii.com
