Fast food restaurants, now accepted dining alternatives, reflect changing cultural patterns within Japanese society. Japanese Restaurants Restaurant dining serves formal purposes. Japanese often entertain guests at restaurants rather than at home. While the entire family may eat out on a special occasion, or the father perhaps for business reasons, parents rarely eat out alone. They cannot imagine leaving their precious child with a paid stranger or neighbor, and they would certainly not entrust their child with an adolescent baby-sitter.
Japanese today eat in many venues.
There are also underground street restaurants, chikado , at major subway stations in large metro areas. Coffee shops, kohii shoppu , and coffee houses, kissaten , are becoming more popular. Most popular is the box lunch called bento , sold at kiosks, grocery stores and department stores. Each bento contains a variety of foods in small portions, usually rice, seafood, and pickled vegetables. While fast food has in the past been regarded as a snack for workers, youth, and mothers with children, today it is becoming more commonplace as a meal for the entire family.