A bento is a home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. The typical bento will contain rice, meat, and vegetables and while we sadly don’t have any protein on hand, Sam and Erin have got the other bases covered with their reviews of volumes five and six of Oishinbo a la Carte. Bon appetit!

Oishinbo a la Carte, Vol. 5: Vegetables

By Tetsu Kariya & Akira Hanasaki
Viz, 268 pp.
Rating: Teen (13+)

I love Oishinbo. You could tell from my review of its first two volumes. I was really looking forward to Vegetables, in part because, well, how often do you read comics about vegetables? And also because, as a Weight Watchers employee, vegetables are an important part of my life. (They’re zero points!)

Most of the short stories included in this volume are delightful: a school bullying problem is cleared up with bean sprouts in shark fin soup, a man’s fear of eggplants is put to rest, and we learn that young children will actually enjoy vegetables if they taste good. In my favorite chapter, a rich broker turned poor digs for new potatoes with his family on his son’s birthday. Last year, he threw his son a lavish party in a hotel, but the boy enjoys this year’s dirt-poor potato-eating excursion far more, because his father is with him instead of being a workaholic. As Dad tastes a delicious potato, he is deeply ashamed and vows to start a new life. Behold! The power of potatoes!

Several chapters are devoted to praising organic vegetables, some of which are more convincing than others. Early in the book Kaibara has the regular cast of taste testers bite into the core of an organic cabbage. “It’s sweet!” they practically scream in shock. “The core of the cabbage is sweet! It’s like a fruit!” I have yet to taste such a magical cabbage myself, and frankly, I don’t think the selection at Whole Foods is going to live up to Kariya-sensei’s Platonic ideal of cabbage.

Weirdly, a two-chapter arc acts as a book recommendation for Days of Eating Earth by Minakami Tsutomu, a Buddhist monk. The book is not available in English at this time. It’s too bad, because Tsutomu has some interesting perspectives. “You are not to smile in glee when you have a fine ingredient,” Tsutomu says in true Buddhist fashion. He continues:

“You must not dislike what is shabby, but turn that shabbiness into something fine… It is wrong to have a change of heart because of what you have. Every grass, every root that came out of the ground has an equal value.”

Tsutomu’s philosophies on the use of ideal ingredients are negated in the very next chapter of the book when Shiro gets into a fight with a local convenience store owner. Shiro refuses to buy lowly conbini vegetables because they’re not organic. Their conflict is solved with food, just like every Oishinbo story.

Overall, Vegetables is perhaps not as exciting as the Sake or Sushi and Sashimi volumes. But it did make me seriously consider buying a hot plate so I can make nabe.

I haven’t tried the two asparagus recipes included in the book, but I will eventually. Asparagus grows in early spring, so I’ll wait until it’s fresh. Hopefully next year I can run a “Cooking with Manga” panel at some conventions in the Northeast where I’ll share my results of Oishinbo, Kitchen Princess, Yakitate!! Japan, and Iron Wok Jan recipes, along with my experiences with Vertical’s line of cookbooks. If you want to be on the panel, or you’d like to sponsor the panel, or have it at a convention you’re running, email me: erin (dot) finnegan (at) gmail (dot) com.

–Reviewed by Erin Finnegan

Oishinbo a la Carte, Vol. 6: The Joy of Rice

By Tetsu Kariya & Akira Hanasaki
Viz, 268 pp.
Rating: Teen (13+)

Growing up, I remember eating white basmati or jasmine rice and feeling different. I felt exotic, almost part of a different culture. It was an experience within itself and going to Chinese food restaurants and ordering a side of white rice felt special (it still does today). So when my eyes glimpsed the sixth volume of Oishinbo, The Joy of Rice, I had to take it up for review. Rice, especially in manga, is recognized as a great symbol of Japanese culture, past, present and future. For example, rice plays a part in Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, being distributed and sought after. Gen regularly dreams of big bowls of rice and takes every opportunity to relish it. It is infused with other traditional and non-traditional Japanese ingredients to create outstanding dishes or it can stand alone, in triangle or ball shape, as its own quick snack. Whichever way you eat it, rice plays an ever-important role of providing Japan with its own identity and that’s exactly what Oishinbo seeks to prove.

One of the things that I really loved about this book is best expressed on the back cover; it is exhaustively detailed. The best thing about these details, though, is the science behind them. That’s right, folks, food science! In one particular instance, Yamako challenges an entire dojo, claiming that they are consuming inferior brown rice, propelling them on a thorough journey through laboratory and farmland. The journey explains the process of how pesticides are passed down from cows to rice patties, similar to diagrams in textbooks. Another instance finds Yamako helping his friend’s new wife determine the best way to prepare rice for her mother-in-law, which leads to Yamako discussing the moisture levels of rice while cooking. Whatever story we come across, whatever challenge there is, charts, graphs, diagrams and detailed drawings inundate the pages. Seeing and understanding all the work and preparation that goes into growing and maintaining rice begins to shed light onto why Japan is so proud of its grain!

Japanese pride is another large topic in this book, which is a double-edged sword when translated for American audiences. While it is heartwarming to see characters stand up for Japanese trade when foreign distributors threaten to invade the rice market, the notion of Japan = Rice floods a fair amount of the dialogue. The end chapter of the book illustrates my point to a T. Amidst a rice ball competition between Yamako and his father—which focuses on Japan’s past, present and future—some of the only responses we get from the crowd are “it brings back the joys of Japan,” “a Japanese person of any age would enjoy this” and “this makes us realize we’re Japanese.” While it certainly establishes the notion the Japan = Rice, an American reader such as myself is left thinking, “Whoa, propaganda!”

That being said, The Joy of Rice is a mouth-watering read, literally! In the front page of the book there’s a full-color recipe for scallop rice, a feature taken directly from the book itself. This isn’t the only delightful and tasty treat; there are a wide variety of other ideas including Red Shiso Fried Chicken Rice Balls (which sound fantastic to me!). All things considered, this is a great addition to the Oishinbo line, retaining the same simplistic art style that we love and information-heavy writing. The series really is a learning experience, successfully integrating Japanese cultures into the mentally and physically hungry hands of the American people!

–Reviewed by Sam Kusek

Review copies provided by the publisher.