About

Yum-Yum Bento Box is written by Crystal “Pikko” Watanabe and Makiko “luckysundae” Ogawa. In September 2009, Maki and her family vacationed in Hawaii to do the photo shoot for Crystal’s bento contributions to the book. Over the course of four days, Pikko and Maki worked long and hard to create over 30 bentos. Photography for Maki’s bentos and tutorial photographs were done in Japan.

Crystal “Pikko” Watanabe

A 30 year-old wife and mother of two toddlers, Crystal Watanabe is the author of the bento blog Adventures in Bentomaking and founder of the online bento newspaper, Bento Central. Born and raised in the small town of Hilo, Hawaii, Crystal now lives in Honolulu, Hawaii with her family where she makes lunches for herself and her husband. She has been making bento since 2007, when she combined the Weight Watchers Core eating plan with the small portions of bento to lose 22 pounds in 4 months.

Known online as “Pikko” from the online MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, Crystal has adopted her gaming character’s name outside of the fantasy world. She now dedicates most of her time and thought process to one important question: “What’s for lunch?”

Makiko “luckysundae” Ogawa

Born and raised in Japan, Maki is the mother of two boys and author of the blog Cute Obento. (You can also read her Japanese blog.)

When her son, Kai, was three years old, he had a difficult time transitioning to kindergarten. To help him adjust to school, she began to make him cute and funny bento.

Now that both of her sons are no longer in kindergarten, Maki continues to create her adorable bento for companies and bento classes. Her work has been seen in Japanese food commercials and in Christopher Salyer’s bento books, Face Food:The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes and Face Food Recipes.