---
title: Satsuki's lunch box
url: https://karigurashijourney.com/en/notes/satsukis-lunch-box/
lang: en
journey: https://karigurashijourney.com/en/episodes/hamamatsu/
---

# Satsuki's lunch box

Cook the local flavors once more　/　Hamamatsu, Shizuoka

A recreation of the lunch Satsuki gets up early to make in My Neighbor Totoro: rice cooked over a kamado, grilled dried sardines, green peas, pink sakura denbu and a pickled plum. The film is said to be set in the mid-1950s, before television had spread through Japan. This time the rice came from the kamado, and the denbu was colored with beet powder.

## Ingredients

- Kamado-cooked rice
- Small dried fish
- Green peas
- Pickled plum (umeboshi)
- White flaked filling
- Beet powder

## How I made it

1. Grill the small fish
2. Sprinkle beet powder over the white flakes and toss in a pan to make pink denbu
3. Pack the freshly cooked rice into the lunch box
4. Top with the denbu, green peas and pickled plum, and finish with the grilled fish

## This moment in the journey: Satsuki's lunch box

My Neighbor Totoro, I was told, is set around 1953, in the days before television. I decided to make a lunch from that era: the one Satsuki gets up early to pack for her father and her little sister Mei.

I grilled two small fish. Sprinkling beet powder over white flakes and tossing them in a pan turned them into pink denbu. Beyond the shoji screens, the mountains caught the afternoon light.

I fluffed the freshly cooked rice and packed it into a red lacquered lunch box: pink denbu, green peas, a pickled plum. The plum turned out to be huge. Then the grilled fish went on top. You're pretty big too.

![The finished lunch box, topped with a grilled fish](https://karigurashijourney.com/img/hamamatsu/s47-1200.jpg)
- Sources: https://news.allabout.co.jp/articles/o/52428/
- Sources: https://anime.eiga.com/news/121851/

Read this scene in the full journey: https://karigurashijourney.com/en/episodes/hamamatsu/