Take a beat box, and add a garage racket.... box frenzy!

[venta]

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.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I suppose I generally tend to search for things along the lines of "buy [item] Ipswich". That usually turns up yellow-pages-type sites (for the common type of item).

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.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

"$ITEM shop $LOCATION" is usually a good starting point. "bento box shop london" got me to here but as far as physical locations go that only suggests Japan Centre as far as I can see.
"bento shopping london" got here which has a few more suggestions.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Try one of these. If they don't have bento boxes they can probably tell you somewhere that does...

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

If you're up in N London at some point, try Oriental City up by Colindale, assuming it's still there?

(Not been up there in years, but it used to be pretty good)

[augeas.livejournal.com]

There used to be loads of Japanese stuff around West Acton / North Ealing when I lived there.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

The other bento-maker I know has in the past recommended the Japan Centre and Just Bento, which you have had recommended here already, but they have also recommended Whole Foods as containing some similar fun boxes.

To answer your general question, whisper it, but more often than not I end up just looking on Argos :-(

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

Try searching for "plastic bento box" or "Lacquer bento box"....

[venta.livejournal.com]

takeaway boxes are a smidge too small for some meals, and are an inconvenient shape to fit in my bag

... 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 :(

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I would go here: http://www.dokiltd.co.uk/

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.