Panda lunch box from shop famed for their overwhelming generosity — too good to be true, or just too good?

Given his recent experience eating an onigiri rice ball weighing one kilogram (2.2 pounds), you’d think our Japanese reporter Yuichiro Wasai had had his fill of eating panda-shaped food, but here he was, back at our favourite bento lunch shop Kitchen Dive, ready for round two.

This time, his opponent was a panda lunch box, called ‘Panda-chan’. Like the rice ball, the lunch box set is a whopping 2.2 pounds, but the lunch box includes an assortment of side dishes to accompany the rice that make up the panda’s face.

▼ As well as rice, the Panda-chan lunch box includes side dishes like weiners and spring rolls.

Yuichiro took his Panda-chan lunch box home, ready to tuck in to what would surely be nothing more than a delicious meal…

…nothing unnatural or controversial about it… right?…

…or so he thought, but what he discovered as he began to eat was so shocking, so nefariously twisted that Yuichiro is considering giving up his job as a SoraNews24 writer just so he can start training as a lawyer, so he can stop such treacherous acts like this from ever happening again.

You see, when all of the side dishes have been eaten…

… a secret layer of rice is revealed, hidden underneath the side dishes!

In legal terms, Yuichiro argues that this sudden reveal has the potential to cause emotional damage to patrons who thought they had finished eating their meal, only for more to be revealed at the last second. He also puts forth the argument that this puts a psychological pressure on those with smaller stomachs, who may not be able to handle such a large amount of rice. Furthermore, Yuuichiro postulates that the placement of rice could cause people to go into shock when they see the strange shape of the panda’s head with all the added rice.

Of course, the counter argument of “You decided to buy a boxed lunch with over two pounds of food in it, so you should have been braced for this sort of thing” is also perfectly valid, and probably a lot more sensible, than Yuichiro’s twisted logic. To him, though, all of this is looking very damning for the Panda-chan lunch box, which is so overflowing with rice that the traditional lunch box compartments (rice, side dish and pickles) are completely ignored in favour of cramming as much rice in as possible. The side dishes and pickles are instead placed on top of the rice.

▼ This compartment in the upper corner of the lunchbox is clearly meant to be for pickles, but instead was filled with rice.

Even if we overlook the fact that the side dishes are delicious… and we ignore the fact that bonito flakes are scattered generously over the rice… this crime is just too heinous to ignore. Such outstanding customer service is diabolical, and to be honest we’d expect nothing less from the store that gave away over 2,200 pounds of free food to help struggling farmers.

If you think you can overcome the emotional damage that the Panda-chan lunch box will surely bring and feel like getting ‘reverse scammed’, prepare your heart and your stomach and head on down to Kitchen Dive. They have other, more reasonably sized lunches there too, if your stomach can’t handle the pressure.

Shop information
Kitchen Dive (Okachimachi branch) / キッチン DIVE（御徒町店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Taito-ku, Ueno 6-2-1
東京都台東区上野6-2-1
Open 24 hours

Photos ©SoraNews24
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