I bought and ate the vegetable kakiage don (510 yen incl. tax). Every time I walked past this bento shop I'd been curious about it~ Also, I feel like vegetable kakiage don is something you rarely find on a bento shop's regular menu, so that caught my interest too, and I ordered it this time. I love vegetable kakiage✨ It might be frozen, but that's totally fine — it gets me hyped that they fry it right in front of you and put it in! ☺️ Unlike a supermarket, the bento shop's advantage is that they make it after you order lol When I took it home and dug in right away, there were crispy parts and parts that had gone soft on top of the rice, and personally I love that contrast~ Delicious✨ The classic bento-shop bento has a nice feel to it, and when you get it as a don they even use a don-style package Next time I'll try ordering something different

I was curious what bento is like in San'ya, the town of day laborers and cheap lodging houses, so I went. Hiyakutei is on the south side of Tamahime Park. The building is old, but it looks like an ordinary bento shop. The menu consists of the items with photos on the wall and those written on the yellow plates behind them. This time I ordered the nori bento for 490 yen. The price is a bit high. The staff's manner was somewhat gloomy, but not enough to bother me. The bento was ready without much of a wait. It came in a plastic bag with chopsticks. It consists of rice, nori, white fish, chikuwa, kinpira, and takuan. Comes with soy sauce and sauce. Surprisingly, the rice wasn't dry and crumbly but in normal condition. The white fish and chikuwa are thick, and although the texture lacks crispness, it's not bad in its own way. Although it's inferior to the nori bento at Hotto Motto and Origin Bento, which are cheaper, it wasn't as bad as I expected. Compared to the 199-yen bento from Kurube in Gunma and the 350-yen bento from Marusan in Saitama that I usually eat, I'd say it's pretty good.

A popular bento shop that opens from early morning on the Asahi shopping street in San'ya, in Tokyo's shitamachi, is "Hiyakutei" Kiyokawa branch. The prices aren't especially cheap, but come lunchtime there's a long line of old guys…. The daily special bento here is a good deal at around 300 yen. Others are mostly around 500–600 yen, and since they make it after taking your order, you get to eat a warm bento. The tatsuta-age in the daily bento I bought before was delicious! Personally, my favorite is the ginger pork bento on the regular menu. There are plenty of places to buy bento around San'ya, but most of them have few options or are the kind of shop where the food is cold and you zap it in the microwave. Above all, the long business hours (6:30am–9:00pm) may be this bento shop's biggest feature. When you buy one of the 7 bentos displayed at the storefront you get a service ticket, and if you collect 10, they'll exchange them for a free bento (worth 600 yen). When I passed by the shop in August 2023, there was a notice saying that, perhaps due to a labor shortage, they had stopped their long continuous hours from early morning to night and would operate in two sessions, morning and evening, for the time being. The long hours were this shop's selling point, but due to the impact of the COVID pandemic, many food businesses have shortened their hours or, in extreme cases, closed down. At New Year 2024, when I looked at the sign placed at the entrance, the hours, which had long been shortened due to the labor shortage, had returned to continuous operation from 6:30am to 8:00pm.

Cheap and tasty. Lots of menu options. Even though I rushed in to order right before closing, they didn't make a face and properly served it freshly made. The hamburg steak is average; there's not much point in adding cheese, so I don't think you need to get the cheese hamburg. The karaage is the well-marinated, thick-batter type. It's delicious. I liked the saba miso.

Came in to buy dinner right before closing time. By the way, the customers who'd pull up to this place in a TAXI are taxi drivers. There's so much on the menu, I can't decide what to get. Ordered the otoku-don. The staff asked me, what do you want on top? Not a shop that's kind to first-timers — what are they even saying? No clue. When I asked, apparently you can choose okaka or soboro on top of the rice. Serving speed is really fast, about 1 minute and it's "here you go." Super deep-fried croquette, minced meat omelet, boom. Low-key, the rice is packed in tight and it's heavy.