Home-made bento sure look tasty, but one of these brothers wasn’t so lucky.

If you’re a Japanophile who grew up overseas, the idea of having your mom pack a bento boxed lunch for you to take to school every day probably sounds unbelievably cool. Just imagine: instead of pulling a peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of a crumpled-up paper bag, you could be opening up a stylish bento box to reveal a variety of carefully prepared morsels like nimono-style stewed beef, tamagoyaki omelets, katsu pork cutlets, or hijiki sea greens, cut into bite-sized pieces to be eaten with white rice.

To keep the various flavors from doing any unwanted mixing, many bento boxes have two tiers: one for the rice, and one for everything else. So imagine the surprise of Japanese Twitter user Sota Tamura when he opened up his two bento containers to find…

…a double-helping of okazu (the non-rice parts of a bento) but not a single grain of Japan’s staple grain.

While it’s true that growing boys need plenty of nutrients, this wasn’t a deliberate attempt by Sota’s mom to pack his lunch with extra protein. Sota also has a younger brother, named Ryosuke. Perhaps because it’s easier for parents with multiple kids to buy their necessities simultaneously, Sota and Ryosuke have the same bento boxes, which meant that while Sota was enjoying his double-portion of okazu, Ryosuke was stuck with…

https://twitter.com/tamukennnn/status/883519265550196737

…enough rice for two people, but absolutely nothing else.

“My mom screwed up,” tweeted Sota along with his photo. “I bet right now my brother is eating just rice,” he predicted, and the brothers ended up exchanging good-natured tweets throughout their lunch break.

▼ Sota: “Hang in there with the rice, little brother.”

▼ Ryosuke: “You got okazu?”

https://twitter.com/tamukennnn/status/883522332949585920

▼ Sota: “I’ve got nothing but okazu.”

▼ Ryosuke: “Totally jealous, dude.”

https://twitter.com/tamukennnn/status/883522571924234241

So remember, as gourmet as an authentic mom-made bento may sound, it’s really only a step up from PB&J if she remembers to give you both parts. But then again, we suppose things could have been worse.

Source: Jin
Featured image: Twitter/@c7c28PD4X3dLjDY

Follow Casey on Twitter, where his high school lunches were all about Syrian bread sandwiches.