All About Furoshiki

What is a furoshiki?

A Furoshiki is a traditional Japanese cloth, usually with a beautiful pattern, that is used to wrap bento boxes and other objects for beautiful presentation and easy carrying. Furoshiki have been used for over a thousand years and have become popular outside of Japan in recent years as an eco-friendly alternative to plastic bags and wrapping paper.

They are very beautiful, and using them can enrich your life and give you moments of pleasure admiring their simple beauty. If you've never tried one, we highly recommend them.

What's the best size furoshiki to get?

In general, there are two sizes of furoshiki 45 cm square and 70 cm square. There are other sizes, like 48 cm, 50 cm, or 68 cm, but you can consider them the same as the 45 cm and 70 cm, respectively, when trying to find the right size furoshiki for your bento box.

The 45 cm square furoshiki will fit any of our size S (less than 500 ml) or size M (500 ml to 700 ml) bento boxes. The 70 cm square furoshiki will fit our size L (500 ml to 700 ml) bento boxes.

  • S or M - 45 cm, 48 cm, 50 cm

  • L - 68 cm, 70 cm

How do you use them?

There are many traditional ways to wrap furoshiki, and we have a great DVD, DVD Furoshiki, which shows you how to wrap them all.

DVD Furoshiki

The image below, from the Japanese Environmental Ministry, also shows you many ways to wrap Furoshiki.

Ways to wrap furoshiki

You can download a PDF of this image here.

I have another question about furoshiki.

Well, email us at contact@bentoandco.com and we'll answer your question and add it to this page for others!