Bento Boxed-Up

No, this is not an article about Japanese-Brazilian models. Although I would consider hiring one to help me organize my life. I'd like to start this post by telling you a short story about an orphan -- my friend's brother's girlfriend. Let's call her Harajuku.

Harajuku grew up in the US and she lived with her parents and a much younger sibling. Her mother had cancer but was in remission for a number of years. Her father was manic depressive and suicidal, although through the patience and care of her mother, her father had lived a normal life when they met and got married. Harajuku was the first born and she went to school in the US, like any other normal little girl. One day, she found out that her mother 's cancer had come back and that made her father very sad. Really, really sad.

So one afternoon when Harajuku came back from school, she found her father and mother having an argument and it was a rather violent episode. In front of her very eyes, her father shot her mother in the head, shot her sister, then her, and then proceeded to kill himself.

Harajuku, luckily (or not), survived.


(Segue to the present)

Harajuku is my friend's brother's girlfriend. She now lives with her relatives and is working in a mutli-national company here in the Philippines. She's pretty and likes to collect bento boxes. An obsession really because she would buy many different kinds, of different colors and sizes, with complicated designs and partitions, depths and inner crevices. She never uses them, but keeps them all boxed-up in their respective shelves, each collecting dust, then cleaned, then collecting dust again year after year. She buys them in shops, in bargain outlets, novelty stores, and mostly, have them delivered through the internet. I'm talking prices in the thousands. Some women buy Balenciagas, she buys Bentos.

My friend says she quite normal and seems happy, but there are times when she says she feels there's something "odd" about her, and she says her relatives say she used to be suicidal when she was younger, a Harajuku committing harakiri.

I told my friends that perhaps those bento boxes help her deal with her trauma. It's her way of compartmentalizing the pain, the guilt, the helplessness, all those thoughts that can never be answered even with time.


My friend says, "yeah you're right."



"But my brother will never marry her."