The online bento community is banding together in a fundraising effort to help raise relief funds for Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami disaster. To find out how you can join in, visit the Bento4Japan website!

Read award-winning bento and cooking blog Bentobloggy, featuring bentos with an American twist!

If you’re looking for ideas for cute bentos, there really isn’t much further you need to look than Makiko Ogawa’s bento blog, Cute Obento. A Japanese mother to two boys, Maki makes bento for everyone in her family, including herself on occasion. With a beautiful photography style and an eagle eye for the little details that make a cute bento perfect, Maki’s images will have you shrieking in delight.

Maki is the co-author of Yum-Yum Bento Box: Fresh Recipes for Adorable Lunches, set to be released this July.

Mothering Corner is written by ShoppingMum, a mother of two young children, who currently resides in Thailand. Read about all the fancy tools she uses and see the insanely cute bentos she comes up with again and again. Fans of charaben will go wild!

Today’s featured blog, bento zen, belongs to Gamene, a Manhattan lawyer who works in a chaotic and often stressful environment.   By taking the time to prepare healthy, colorful, and artistic lunch boxes, she guarantees herself at least one moment of harmony during her busy work day.  Gamene is a former vegetarian who now dabbles in fish, but many of her bentos are vegetarian. Her nutritional philosophy focuses on fresh fruits and vegetables as an important component of each meal.

If you liked the “Bunny Bahn Mi Bento” recently posted here on Bento Central, click through to read more about Gamene and her blog bento zen for helpful tips, links, and recipes.

Debra and her husband “Saba Man” both grew up in Hawaii where they enjoyed a culturally diverse diet and where bento boxes were the norm.  It was a natural step to start packing bento boxes when they decided to save money by not purchasing lunches at work.

Debra is a vegetarian but “Saba Man” is not, however they both like eating nutritrious foods coupled with a variety of ethnic flavors so neither of them suffers.  Their bento boxes are not only healthy and tasty, but also express and celebrate their combined Hawaiian, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, African American and European heritages!

Visit hapa bento to see her bento boxes, recipes, and fun contests.

I have been packing bento for my hubby, Rob, for over a year and a half now. My daughter, Kat, has been packing them for herself for over 2 years. I came across bento on instructables and started surfing the web for more info and resources.

I bought Kat a starter set for Christmas that year. It has been a bit of an obsession ever since. For the most part, Rob likes typical American food in his bento–thus the name of my blog. Kat is more inclined to incorporate Asian and Asian-inspired foods into her bento and does a lot more actual cooking for hers than I do for Rob’s. Much of what I use is store bought or leftovers. Cooking dinner most nights is enough cooking for me!

Visit my blog at An American in Bento!