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Take a beat box, and add a garage racket.... box frenzy!
How does one use google again?
Specifically, how does one use it locate real, physical shops that one can really, physically visit? Obviously it's easy to answer (say) "where is the nearest branch of Smiths?", but it I want to answer "where is the nearest shop which will sell me a specific, but faintly obscure, item?", how do I go about doing that?
I'm sure there must be a perfectly simple, obvious solution, but I appear to be missing it. All I can turn up is online stores. Yellow pages seemed like a good guess, but unless you can phrase your question sufficiently broadly, you don't get any sense out of it.
Having kept up making bento boxes for lunch for a month, I figured I'd reward myself with a proper bento box. Primarily the reason for wanting one is that my plastic takeaway boxes are a smidge too small for some meals, and are an inconvenient shape to fit in my bag. They'll clearly "do", but I'd like something nicer.
Before anyone suggests this: yes, I know there are plenty of online bento box suppliers, many of whom are of unimpeachable character, sell boxes of superlative quality, and are capable of having a shiny box couriered to my door by a trained fleet of dancing unicorns.
However! I am not particularly familiar with bento lunchboxes. I have never, as far as I'm aware, met one. I should like, ideally, to eye up the size of the box in the real, test its weight, examine the seal on the lid, see how flexible/breakable the plastic is, and so on. In short, I wish to meet the box before I purchase it[*]. This requires me to find a real, physical outlet.
I figured hey, I live in London, how hard can it be? Surely one can buy almost anything in London. Particularly if one has had the foresight to move to an area of London with a large Japanese population. However, the only genuine vendor I have thus far been able to locate is Japan Centre in Regent Street. I trundled optimistically along there last Friday, to find they had a tiny selection of tiny boxes, all cutesy-wutesy kiddy patterns and with no seals at all on the lids. I asked if they sold any larger bento boxes, or boxes intended for adults, and the assistant looked at me as if I was howlingly insane.
(This whole lid thing is bothering me. Maybe strapping your box up and carrying it carefully in a bag is fine for some people, but my box has got to cope with being flung around on a railway baggage rack or dumped on a lap, by quite a clumsy person, and I damn well want a proper silicon/rubber seal. Some online retailers mention a seal, others don't, which leads me to believe there isn't one.)
So the question I would most like answered is: where can I find a shop in my approximate area which sells bento boxes? The more general question is: how do I locate shops on google?
Any ideas?
[*] Yes, it might not be possible. But it is plan A.
Specifically, how does one use it locate real, physical shops that one can really, physically visit? Obviously it's easy to answer (say) "where is the nearest branch of Smiths?", but it I want to answer "where is the nearest shop which will sell me a specific, but faintly obscure, item?", how do I go about doing that?
I'm sure there must be a perfectly simple, obvious solution, but I appear to be missing it. All I can turn up is online stores. Yellow pages seemed like a good guess, but unless you can phrase your question sufficiently broadly, you don't get any sense out of it.
Having kept up making bento boxes for lunch for a month, I figured I'd reward myself with a proper bento box. Primarily the reason for wanting one is that my plastic takeaway boxes are a smidge too small for some meals, and are an inconvenient shape to fit in my bag. They'll clearly "do", but I'd like something nicer.
Before anyone suggests this: yes, I know there are plenty of online bento box suppliers, many of whom are of unimpeachable character, sell boxes of superlative quality, and are capable of having a shiny box couriered to my door by a trained fleet of dancing unicorns.
However! I am not particularly familiar with bento lunchboxes. I have never, as far as I'm aware, met one. I should like, ideally, to eye up the size of the box in the real, test its weight, examine the seal on the lid, see how flexible/breakable the plastic is, and so on. In short, I wish to meet the box before I purchase it[*]. This requires me to find a real, physical outlet.
I figured hey, I live in London, how hard can it be? Surely one can buy almost anything in London. Particularly if one has had the foresight to move to an area of London with a large Japanese population. However, the only genuine vendor I have thus far been able to locate is Japan Centre in Regent Street. I trundled optimistically along there last Friday, to find they had a tiny selection of tiny boxes, all cutesy-wutesy kiddy patterns and with no seals at all on the lids. I asked if they sold any larger bento boxes, or boxes intended for adults, and the assistant looked at me as if I was howlingly insane.
(This whole lid thing is bothering me. Maybe strapping your box up and carrying it carefully in a bag is fine for some people, but my box has got to cope with being flung around on a railway baggage rack or dumped on a lap, by quite a clumsy person, and I damn well want a proper silicon/rubber seal. Some online retailers mention a seal, others don't, which leads me to believe there isn't one.)
So the question I would most like answered is: where can I find a shop in my approximate area which sells bento boxes? The more general question is: how do I locate shops on google?
Any ideas?
[*] Yes, it might not be possible. But it is plan A.
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For your particular query, have you tried Muji? Sounds like the sort of thing they might stock.
Hmm, this thread doesn't seem very optimistic.
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I have also found that thread, but was optimistically hoping that it was out of date (since bento boxes have alledgedly been growing in popularity in the UK). In fact, I think I found that thread by typing "buy bento box London" :)
It doesn't help, of course, that restaurants sells things called bento boxes all the time, so I keep finding places that sell the food rather than the container.
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"bento shopping london" got here which has a few more suggestions.
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I started from the first thread :) I don't think I've seen the second, though.
Mitsukoshi is indeed nextdoor to Japan Centre. I saw it, and it is clearly labelled "Japanese department store", however it looks more like a block of offices and was terribly daunting. Maybe I should go and give it a try... I was assuming it was the UK office of a department store, and thus not something I could wander into!
(Although this review (http://www.qype.co.uk/place/311142-Mitsukoshi-London) does suggest it's slightly aimed at Japanese-speaking residents/tourists who want to buy British things!)
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I'll keep trying though :)
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(Not been up there in years, but it used to be pretty good)
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[1] also not the first time.
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To answer your general question, whisper it, but more often than not I end up just looking on Argos :-(
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Also surely on this case Argos is the worst of all possible worlds, combining the inconvenience of going to a shop with the inability to view goods of a website :)
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They do have odds and bits of kitchenware, so it's probably worth sticking my nose in next time I'm in Kensinbton, thanks.
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... which means they don't stay horizontal. And are not quite liquidtight. Despite deployment of extra elastic bands.
Which is why I now have sesame sauce on the inside of my laptop bag :(
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They used to have a wonderful place in the Oriental City. I'm pretty sure they had bento, even though their main thing is ceramics.
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Posts will doubtless be forthcoming on the topic :)