If you eat a Kiyoken Shumai Bento in Hokkaido, you too can become a hero

When I board a plane at Haneda Airport, I buy a Kiyoken Shumai Bento with high probability.
It is, needless to say, a famous Yokohama bento.
I would like to say "I always buy it," but it's not like I'm so obsessed that I have to buy it, so I buy it in moderation.
I won't talk much about which parts I like this time, but if I had to say one thing aside from the taste, it's that no matter how bad the turbulence is on the plane, there's little worry about it scattering if you're holding it in your hand.
When you unwrap the paper and flip open the thin lid, the familiar side dishes appear.
I am always very excited at this moment.
I really love the feeling of holding the extraordinary experience of flying and the ordinary experience of a familiar bento at the same time.

Now then. In writing this article, I checked the number of Kiyoken Shumai Bentos I have eaten over the 13 years for which I have records (that is, since I switched to an iPhone in 2013). The number of Shumai Bento photos discovered from 45,155 photos was37 (including two Shumai Fried Rice Bentos).
It's not a small number, but it's not pathological either.
Maybe three times a year. It means my enthusiasm is a little higher than the average.

You might be thinking, "Aren't there Shumai Bentos you didn't take pictures of?" but that is probably not the case. Before eating a Shumai Bento, my actions are so ingrained in my body that I take a picture instead of saying "Itadakimasu." I want to convey that this is a highly credible number.

By the way, I think some explanation is needed regarding my feelings that I used as the title.
Simply put, this means that you can give one-of-a-kind originality to a person like me, who seems to be everywhere.

The world likes to rank various things even when not asked.
What number are you? This person is above you.
And, not to quote any lyrics, but people just want to decide who is number one.
However, it is hard to become number one.
If you go to school or work, there are countless people better than you, and it is very difficult to become "the only one" in anything.
In that case, you should create a world where you can be "the only one" yourself.

And that is very easy to achieve.
In other words, you just need to eat a Shumai Bento in a region where no one else is eating one. At that point, you can become "the only person eating a Shumai Bento in that land."
Even an ordinary person becomes dramatic the moment they go to another world, is praised as a hero, and becomes a story as an isekai reincarnation. It's the same kind of feeling.

I feel like I'm inducing some bitter smiles, but I don't have time to flinch, so I will proceed forcefully.

The best-selling bento in the Tokyo metropolitan area is probably the Kiyoken Shumai Bento.

As an experiment, I had an AI calculate how many people are eating this "number one" bento, which is made in Yokohama, at around 12:30 PM at the same time.

At 12:30 PM, it said, "Maybe about 2,900 people."
When I continued and asked how many of those 2,900 people were eating itwhile on an airplane, the AI answered that it was probably about 45 people.

Yes. Just by eating a Kiyoken Shumai Bento in the sky, you can becomeone of the 45 out of 27,000 people. (I apologize for the Fermi estimation-like numerical sense.)

Then, to increase the scarcity even further, what if we think about the number of people who eat that Shumai Bentoafter the plane arrives and they reach their destination? There is no need to have an AI answer that. That number is bound to be almost zero.

Suppose you buy a Shumai Bento, board a plane, and head to Hokkaido.
You don't eat it on the plane, but get off, and take the Rapid Airport train to Sapporo.
Let's dare to eat that Shumai Bento in Hokkaido, where there is plenty of delicious food. Then what happens? You and that Shumai Bento become
(probably)"the only Shumai Bento currently existing in Hokkaido"and"the only person eating it".
You are truly a hero reincarnated into a world without Shumai Bentos. People can easily become one-of-a-kind in this way.

This photo is of a Shumai Bento that I resisted eating on the plane and dared to carry to Sapporo. Since it is a bento that is not sold by air freight in the first place, it does not appear at local product exhibitions or station bento fairs.
In other words, I think that on that day, this Shumai Bento was probablythe only complete specimen that existed in Hokkaido. Thinking that, I can enjoy it with even more flavor. A tiny enclave of Yokohama in the form of a bento box that temporarily appeared in snowy Hokkaido. I can feel the camera focusing on me from above so as not to miss this precious scene.
"I'm probably the only one eating a Shumai Bento in Hokkaido right now"... I chuckle to myself, and the alcohol goes down well.

You can laugh it off as "ridiculous" if you want.
However, becoming the only one can be this modest.
I am the type of person who wants to enjoy even such modest things one by one.

If there ever comes a time when I think I'm the only one, but it turns out someone else was doing the same thing...
Well, that's just how it is.
I would definitely like to be friends with such a person.

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