Theresa, my wife, just bought us both these wonderful lunch carriers made by the Japanese company Zojirushi. Besides being a simple, functional, aesthetically pleasing and complete solution to the problem of moving food around, my new lunch carrier gave me a cool cross-cultural experience today as I opened it up for lunch at work for the first time.

Last night, Theresa packed us both food for today. As I pulled the three separate, sealed containers out of the metal tube they sit in, wondering what would be in each one, I felt a deep sense of the shared enterprise that is my home life, and the caring that my containers filled with homemade food represented.

Reflecting back on the time I spent living in Japan, I thought about how this unpacking of a homemade lunch is an experience that many Japanese men (gender roles being what they are in Japan) have every day.

For the first time, I really felt how much that ritual-preparing, packing, unpacking, eating lunch-can express the emotional facet of shared lives.

Itedakimasu: I will receive.