600 Lunchboxes a Day: The Bento Shop That Starts Frying at 4:32 a.m.

Thirty seconds' walk from Shin-Koyasu station, on the edge of the industrial belt north of Yokohama, one shop has its lights on at five in the morning. Obento no Ihee. No seats, no dining room — you buy a box and take it to work.

Prep starts at 4:32 a.m. By then the fryer is already running. The shop goes through 40 kilos of chicken a day (about 88 lb) and 20 kilos of rice, and sells somewhere around 600 lunchboxes.

The owner, Hitomi Yoshida, is 63. She has run the place for six years. It exists because she once said that closing it would be a waste.

What a bento actually is

A bento is a packed meal in a lidded box: rice on one side, a main and a few sides on the other, eaten cold or at room temperature. In Japan it is ordinary infrastructure rather than a delicacy — construction crews, factory staff and people coming off a night shift buy one on the way in.

That is why a shop like this opens before dawn, and it is why the portions are sized the way they are. More on that below.

Watch the video

The shop is open because closing it seemed like a waste

The site was already a fried-chicken shop. Yoshida's father ran a factory, and this was its retail outlet — though nothing was cooked here at the time. Stock arrived, went onto a shelf, and was sold much the way a convenience store sells things.

Then the business started to slide, and closing it came up. She pushed back. It seemed like a waste, she said — so she took it on herself.

That was six years ago. Almost everything on the shelves now is made in the kitchen behind them: the fried chicken, the rice balls, the katsu, the fried fish.

Forty kilos of chicken, every day

The day starts with karaage. Chicken marinated overnight in garlic and soy is tossed in potato starch and lowered into the fryer for five minutes.

There are three seasonings: soy, garlic, and a salt version cured with shio-koji, kombu and white sesame. You can order half of one and half of another.

Forty kilos of chicken a day. The finished pieces come out in heaps, go onto trays, and are carried to the case beside the register. This runs without pause until the doors open.

Doors at five, and 200 rice balls

While the frying continues, the shop gets set up around it: lights on in the display case, covers off, product out.

There are 20 kinds of onigiri — rice balls. Two hundred of them went onto the shelf that morning. Boiled eggs, salt included, are ¥50. There is a sandwich section. Everything you can buy with one hand in half a minute is grouped near the register.

Five o'clock. It is still dark outside.

Portions are measured in grams

The chalkboard does not describe the fried chicken. It weighs it.

Prices, as filmed:

One customer in the video orders large rice, medium chicken, half garlic and half soy. The lid will not close. That box is ¥730.

The rice matters too: 20 kilos a day, cooked in a new machine that lets her tune how firm it comes out.

Nobody has counted the menu

Asked how many kinds of bento there are, Yoshida does not have a number. She has never counted.

Visible in the video alone: mentaiko, ginger pork, ham and egg, miso katsu, hamburg with fried chicken, fried chicken with daikon greens, pork-wrapped eggplant fritters, chili-mayo chicken, a seafood fry box, mapo eggplant over rice, katsu simmered with egg over rice, and a daily special — pork in gochujang, that day.

Some of these you will not find elsewhere. Daikon greens are usually thrown away.

Two peaks: 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

The rush comes at seven in the morning. Then again at seven at night. In between, the shop does not close for a break.

There is an industrial zone nearby, so a good share of the morning trade is people coming off a night shift. That is part of why a heavy fried-chicken box sells at six in the morning.

Asked how she manages it, Yoshida's answer is short:

You have to grind yourself down.

On sleep, she would like five hours. She takes it when she can get it.

The regulars are committed. Two men who come twice a week eat the hamburg bento almost exclusively — ten a month easily, more like fifteen, and they are fairly sure nobody is beating them at it. Another man, in every morning, recommends the chicken-and-egg bowl: the pieces are big, he says, and it fills you up. ¥650.

If you are going

Hours and closing days change. Worth confirming before you go.

One note: this is a counter, not a restaurant. Order, pay, take the box with you.

The part text cannot carry

Everything above is the reporting. What it leaves out is the tempo.

The lit window before dawn, the crowd that thickens each time a train pulls in, the regular who picks his box in three seconds, the lid that will not close. It runs like that straight through to the 12:38 lunch rush without stopping.

That part is worth watching.