We had a little early gift exchange party at our friend’s place. I got my boyfriend Beatles Rock Band for Xbox 360, Jet Li’s “Fearless” on blu-ray (we own the DVD, but blu-ray looks so pretty) and the 1st volume of Moyashimon in English. He got me an amazing statue of pure awesomeness.

He looks just like my bento!

Check out my Laputa robot bento HERE and HERE!

He's got a fox squirrel on his shoulder.

He's got a flower in his hand.

I n our place we have built-in book shelves, and one of them in the foyer is dedicated to Ghibli stuff. On there we keep all our Ghibli music boxes, Nausicaa & Ohmu statues, Ghibli desktop calendar, etc… He knows how much I love the Laputa robot and adding more Ghibli stuff to the collection.

We didn’t do any Christmas decorations this year until the very last minute because, well, just like I mentioned, we’ve been busy enjoying our Christmas gifts. But after we came back from our Christmas night dinner at Minca (a ramen place in NYC), we decorated the Christmas tree pin cushion I made a very long time ago. The plush Christmas tree is not my original idea. I saw it on some site a long time ago but I couldn’t find it again. It’s very easy to make. In fact, I made bunch of them and gave them to my friends at work. I made a cone shape with fabric, sewed it, put glass marbles at the bottom so it’d stay upright, and sewed the bottom by hand.  I wrapped some ribbons on it, and put some pins on it. Then I sewed stockings with felt, for my boyfriend, my cat and me. My boyfriend made bunch of snowflakes! A couple of pine cones we collected from Prospect Park on a dinner plate, and voila!

Here’s the “naked version.” (with a star on the top) I kind of like this version too.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Even though I don’t eat sweet stuff that much, I always wanted to make marshmallows. I was going to make some elaborate marshmallows, but since I had to make at least dozens of them I had to pick a simpler character. As I was looking through recipes, the one that looks like Hershey’s kisses reminded me of Slimes from Dragon Quest. (”Dragon Warrior” in English) So I decided to make Slimes! NOTE: Sorry for the quality of the pictures for the How-to. I shot them myself since I made this when my boyfriend wasn’t home. >_<

Slime Marshmallows (makes about 30~ Hershey’s kisses size marshmallow)
Gelatin – 1 TBS
Water – 1/4 cup
Egg white – 1
Sugar A – 1/2 TBS
Sugar B – 1 cup
Vanilla essence – about 2 drops
Corn starch – enough to dust a pan and marshmallows
Food coloring (For “slime” marshmallow)
White and red icing (For “slime” marshmallow)
Brown decorating gel/chocolate (For “slime” marshmallow)

*If you’re making regular marshmallows by pouring the mixture into a tupperware or pan, you can double the measurement, but I won’t recommend doing it for the slime marshmallows. Gelatin hardens pretty fast, and if you have more mixture than what the recipe says, it’ll get hard before you can squeeze it all out. I learned this the hard way…

Prep:
- Separate egg white from egg yolk, and bring the egg white to room temperature. (let it sit for 20-30 minutes)
- Put cooking sheet (parchment paper/wax paper) on a pan, dust it well with corn starch
- Put water into a large microwavable bowl, add gelatin and leave it for about 15 minutes.

*Use a large bowl for gelatin. Gelatin will get really bubbly while being microwaved and it can boil over.
*Make sure you put the gelatin into the water, do not pour water over the gelatin.

1. Put the egg white into a dry bowl and beat it until it gets fluffy.

Make sure the bowl is dry.

2. Add “sugar A” (1/2 TBS) to the egg white and continue beating until it holds a stiff peak.

Sugar will make the egg white shiny and harder.

3. Microwave the bowl of gelatin uncovered for 45 seconds.

4. Add “sugar B” (1 cup) to the gelatin in the bowl (you don’t need to mix it), and microwave it uncovered for a minute and a half.

Make sure you use a large bowl.

5. Slowly add the hot gelatin mixture into the egg white, and whip it until it’s mixed.

Do it quickly gelatin starts getting hard.

6. Add vanilla essence and 2-3 drops of food coloring. (If you want, you can also add 1 and 1/2 TBS of jam, or 1 TBS of diluted coffee or cocoa while you’re mixing instead of food coloring.)

Do it quickly before gelatin starts getting hard.

7. Put the mixture into a pastry bag and squeeze it out on the pan dusted with corn starch. Put the pan into the fridge for 20-30 minutes.

The mixture might be a little too loose to form this shape at first, but just keep testing by squeezing it out a little bit at a time. Once the mixture is hard enough, don't waste your time and squeeze it out as fast as you can!

*You can also just use a well dusted pan or tupperware for making marshmallows. You just pour the mixture in and put it in the fridge. Remove it from the container, and cut it up with a knife or use various cookie cutters to cut out marshmallows.

7. When the marshmallows harden, dust them lightly with corn starch.

Dust them well otherwise they'll stick together.

8. Dust off excess corn starch very well. (I used a brush.) If there’s excess starch on the slime, the icing will not stick.

9. Squeeze 2 dots of white icing onto the slime face. Then gently push the icing on the face with a wet finger to flatten it.

Dust the marshmallows very well. If the marshmallow is too dusty, icing won't stick.

10. Squeeze red icing for its mouth onto the slime face. Then push the icing on the face with a wet finger to flatten it.

Slimes smile : )

11. Squeeze brown decorating gel or apply melted chocolate with a toothpick on the white icing. I used gel because I didn’t have time to melt chocolate, but if you have time use chocolate instead. (Gel will not get hard.)

BLUE SLIMES HAVE APPEARED! COMMAND?

- FIGHT
- SPELL
- RUN
- ITEM
- EAT!!

Homemade marshmallows are definitely softer and they will melt in your mouth. I’m sure it’ll be so good in hot cocoa, but I haven’t tried it yet. Just like I mentioned in the beginning, you can just pour the mixture into a well dusted pan or tupperwear after step 6. When you use cookie cutters, make sure you dust the cutters with corn starch. It’ll make it easier to cut the marshmallows. I think I’ll use the Rabbid cutter next time, or maybe make a Totoro cutter. : )

How to make Slime marshmallows on my flickr.

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.

If you have any questions about any of my how-to’s, please feel free to leave a comment or email me!

It made me droll, and I had to make it. (sorry for the poor picture quality. I shot them.)

I burned it a little bit, but it was still so moist inside!

The written recipe is here.

I like the Jalapeno sauce. It’s a great substitute for ssamjang sauce (the sauce used for bossam) if you can’t get the real ssamjang sauce. The ginger and scallion sauce was a bit too oily for my taste. Maybe because I used cheap vegetable oil. I added a bit of sesame oil to remove the overwhelming oily flavor, and I basically just scooped the scallion and put it on my pork. I cheated and used sushi powder to make sushi rice though.

I got an 8lbs pork shoulder for about $9. My boyfriend and I ate it like regular bossam couple of times, and ate it with ramen (just like they did in the video) a couple of times, and there was still a LOT of it left!

Ramen with bossam, poached egg, scallion and seaweed

After we had the bossam ramen the first night, I remembered that I had special ramen bowls my friend gave us... so we had to eat bossam ramen again with the bowls. (sounds like a good excuse, right?)

Just out of curiosity, I made a roll with it. Seaweed, sushi rice (seasoned with vinegar and sugar), lettuce, pork, scallion and left over Jalapeno sauce. I ate it with soy sauce and wasabi like a regular roll and it was pretty good!

I used pretty much the same ingredients I used for the bossam.

For two people this pork shoulder lasted a little more than a week. We didn’t really try to eat it for every meal though, actually. If you keep it in an air tight container, it’ll stay soft when you heat it up.

And now, for those who aren’t turned off by the idea of eating pork skin, read on. If you are, stop reading here…

As you can see it in the video, if you buy a pork shoulder with skin, you’re going to have to remove a lot of skin. I could only find pork shoulder with skin, and it seemed like a lot of waste to just throw it away. Besides, pork skin contains a lot of natural collagen, and it’s considered a beauty food in Japan. A couple of minutes of googling in Japanese, I found a recipe. There are some Asian ingredients, but you’ll probably be able to find them at an Asian food section in a super market like Whole Foods.

Soft pork skin
- pork skin (left over from the 8 lbs pork shoulder)
- 1/4 of a leek
- ginger (about half of a thumb), sliced
- 7 TBS (approx. 100ml) soy sauce
- 7 TBS (100ml) mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine) OR sherry
-  7/8 cups (200ml) konbu dashi (stock made with dried kelp)
- 1 tbs of sugar
- 5 TS (25ml) cooking sake OR cooking wine

*the original recipe had twice as much as ingredients, but after I cooked it, I realized that the half of it should do just fine.

All you have to do is cut up skin into smaller pieces, and boil it with all the ingredients in low heat for 30 minutes.

That’s it! The hard pork skin will become very soft. The soup is just to season the pork skin, so you don’t actually eat it, but if you aren’t eating the pork skin right away, put both the pork and the soup into a tupperware and keep it in the fridge.

If you put it in the fridge, the pork fat will harden on the top, and the whole soup will be very jelly but don’t worry, that’s how it’s supposed to be. You can just take pork skin out, heat it up and eat or use it.

You can eat the pork as is. It’s a bit salty by itself, it’s more like a side dish than a main dish. But you can also make it into a main dish cooking the pork skin with other food.

Stir fry vegetable with soft pork skin
- ginger (about half of a thumb), chopped
- *2 red hot chili pepper without seed, chopped *only if you want it spicy
- *1 and 1/2 TS of Tobanjan (hot bean paste) *only if you want it spicy
- various veggies (I used left over leeks, carrot, shiitake, snow pea)
- 4 TS (20ml) cooking sake or white wine
- 2 TS of oyster sauce
- 1 TS of soy sauce

1. Heat up oil, and put ginger and *hot chili pepper
2. When ginger begins to smell nice, put *tobanjan
3. Put vegetables in and stir fry.
4. Put pork skin in and mix it well with vegetables.
5. Pour cooking sake in, and let the alcohol evaporate.
6. Put oyster sauce and soy sauce mix it well.

*Only if you like spicy

Soft pork skin and stir-fried vegetables

I think baby corn and water chestnuts will also go well with this dish. You can just throw the pork skin into pretty much any stir fried vegetables.

Make sure you visit “Hungry Nation: Real people. Real food.” for more affordable & easy & delicious food!

Read the second article on the page at Penny Arcade. (*The site contains mature language!)

Back in October, I got an email from a blog reader, telling me that Penny Arcade was having a Katamari Forever (a PS3 game) contest. They just wanted people to submit their awesome Katamari creations. I couldn’t find any rules for how recent the katamari creation should be but I didn’t want to mislead them… So in the email I mentioned that the bento wasn’t new or specifically created for the contest, but I wanted to submit my bento because I love Penny Arcade, and I just wanted to show some support!

Well anyway, they announced the winners today! My friend in the office came running to me and said “You’ve won the first prize!” I didn’t know what he meant at first, and he said “Your Katamari bento is on Penny Arcade!”

To be honest, I couldn’t help feeling guilty for winning at first because I’ve seen many awesome Katamari creations before, and my entry wasn’t even new… But this is Penny Arcade. If you know who they are, you know they’re very honest and straight forward about everything. So I decided that I’m just going to trust their judgment and not worry about it. (Unless they change their mind )

I won the Head half of the Noby Noby Boy scarf, signed art from Katamari Forever producer Kazuhito Udetsu, a copy of Katamari Forever, and the Japanese soundtrack!!

The pictures of the amazing prizes are here.

After a little bit of doing a research online, I learned that the scarf was hand knitted by the mother of Keita Takahashi, the creator of Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy. O_O He and his family made handmade gifts, because he wanted to give players some kind of real life rewards rather than virtual items they can download. They ended up not doing this because of privacy issues in different countries… But how awesome is that?! Even my own mom never knitted me anything. I feel extremely honored.

The discussion he had at GDC09 (Game Developers Conference 2009) was very interesting because he sounds nothing like a regular game developer. If you’re interested, check out the translation of his discussion at GDC09 on “Game Set Watch” here. It’s a long article, but it’s worth a read. His passion and concept for a “video game” made me even a bigger fan of his game.

Well, I said I was not gonna worry about it, but I still feel like I’m going to get tons of hate mails for winning such amazing prizes… (I just can’t help it! >_<)

And of course, million thanks to Scott for letting me know about the contest!!

Oh and my blog entry for Katamari bento is here.

Bento #68: MGS4
Created and eaten on: 12/4/2009

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been making that many kyaraben recently, and not much kyaraben-ing can mean a couple of things. It’s usually either I’m making something, like plushes and birthday presents, or I’m watching my boyfriend play video games. I LOVE watching him play video games, especially the ones with a good story and many cut scenes (animation scenes). I’m just too lazy to play it by myself.

Anyway, BestBuy had some good deal with video games a while ago so my boyfriend got bunch of games and one of them was “Metal Gear Solid 4.” The game series has been around since 1998 and famous for its crazy over-the-top plot. It’d take several long paragraphs if I tried to describe the story, and yet it still wouldn’t help explaining this bento, so if you’re interested in the game, go wiki it!

I enjoyed watching MGS4 a LOT. Each cut scene is very long, so it’s almost like watching a theatrical anime film. I watched almost the entire game (about 12 hours in a couple sittings), and it was so good that I even felt sad when he beat the game. The graphics are so beautiful, the music is very well composed, and the story has a great mixture of seriousness and silliness, or sometimes both at the same time.

Watching him play really made me want to make a MGS bento, but everything in the game looks so realistic… except the cooking timer. In MGS4, there is a character who makes sunny side up eggs, and she has this adorable duck-shaped cooking timer (called Ga-Ko), so I decided to make the duck and sunny side eggs.

After I put lettuce and sauteed renkon in the bento, I took the yolk out of hard boiled eggs, and mixed it with rice to make it yellow. I then wrapped the rice with plastic wrap, made two balls and put them together. Then I made the wing and leg parts with the left over rice. The beak, eyes, feet and timer part on the stomach I cut out of cheese. (I realize that Ga-Ko had a needle after I made this bento…)

I couldn't even put the number or a needle on the clock face...

I should just call it "a cute duck with a white plate on its belly."

For the sunny side up eggs, I mixed rice with black sesame seed, wrapped it with plastic wrap, and made it into a flat cylinder. I cooked quail eggs sunny side up. When I dropped the second egg, it started to slide away from the first egg, so I quickly put the egg mold (metal loop thingy) over the eggs to keep them together.

Sunny's sunny side up eggs, "Third Sun." The eggs have to be over easy.

For the meat, I wrapped five small asparagus and carrot on the center with bacon, skewered it with a toothpick and cooked it. After it was cooked, I cut it like a sushi roll. (Bacon shrinks and wraps tighter when cooked, so you can take the toothpick out and it won’t come undone.) I put them in the bento, and filled empty spaces with cooked broccoli and grape tomatoes.

I just added carrot in the center, but it looks a lot cuter than just with asparagus, doesn't it?

I didn’t think the bacon flowers were enough, so I put frozen homemade meat balls I had made before. Originally, I wanted to make them into the “Dwarf Gekko,” a ball-like robot with three arms from MGS4. But I was out of time, and couldn’t put the arms on. Without its arms, it was impossible to recognize it as a Dwarf Gekko, and I was so unhappy with this. T_T But I did my best making ” ! ” (when enemies spot you, they’ll have a ” ! ” on top of their head) and put them over their heads.

!

When everything was done, I cut seaweed for the duck’s pupils, the line on the beak, and the lines on the timer.

This bento made me want to photoshop stuff that I couldn't put on my bento.

This was probably one of the most obscure bento I’ve ever made. My boyfriend got it (except the Dwarf Gekko), so that’s all it matters, but I wonder how many people would actually recognize this… except my friend at work. He got obsessed with MGS recently, and he’s watched ALL the cut scenes from MGS series on youtube, so he recognized it even though he’s never played MGS4.

I’ve never mentioned this in my blog before but my boyfriend is an amazing impersonator. He can do Simpson characters, characters from TV shows, our friends, etc… But after playing MGS4, Old Snake (the main character) was added to his list. He can sound EXACTLY like Old Snake!! How cool is that?? Everything sounds 10 times funnier in Old Snake’s voice. Hideo Kojima (the creator of MGS) says this is the last MGS, but who knows… One can only hope…

Duck timer (Ga-Ko):
- rice mixed with hard boiled egg yolk
- cheese, seaweed

Sunny side up eggs:
- quail eggs
- rice mixed with black sesame seed

Dwarf Gekko (wanna-be):
- meatballs
- carrot for ” ! ”

Flowers:
- asparagus & carrot wrapped with bacon

Other food:
- broccoli
- grape tomato

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.

Stuffed stuff: Bear Shaman from Castle Crashers
Created and stuffed: October 2009

When I was making birthday gifts for Dan Paladin, the creator and art director of Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers, I originally wanted to make four plushes. I was very ambitious and optimistic. But as I expected, I couldn’t finish them on time… I didn’t want to sent them too late (since they were birthday gifts) so I only sent him two plushes of the character from the new game that’s coming out 2010. (“Cube head guy” and “Golden whale”)

After I sent off the birthday gifts, I decided to finish them anyway. This was one of the birthday gifts, bear shaman (or Bipolar bear? Not sure of the official name) from Castle Crashers. Since I had a little more extra time to finish, I got the right doll eyes. I modified the patterns for the Dana doll I’ve made for my friend, and made the pattern for his head.

head bigger than the body = cute factor

Actually he's got a fluffy tail. If I ever make another one, I think I'll make it with yarn.

For his nose and mouth, I used black stitching thread.

Big eyes = cute factor

He’s got blood on his forehead, his body is mean looking… of course, in the absolutely cutest way possible. I thought about splashing red acrylic paint for the blood but I wasn’t sure how an acrylic paint would look on the fuzzy surface of fleece, so I decided to cut red felt and glued it on as the blood.

Blood on his forhead = cute factor

Huge eyes = cute factor

Blood everywhere = cute factor

Oh yeah, and he’s got a fish sword.

Dead fish as a weapon = cute factor

Everything together = uber cute

For more pictures of this plush, visit stuffed stuff: Bear Shaman from Castle Crashersset!

Check out more stuffed stuff set set on my flickr page.

Stuffed stuff: Alien from Alien Hominid
Created and stuffed: October 2009

This is the alien from Alien Hominid, another birthday gift for Dan Paladin (the creator of Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers) which I couldn’t finish on time. (I was able to finish “Cube head guy” and “Golden Whale” though!) Alien Hominid started as an indie flash game on Newgrounds.com. The 2-D style art was designed by Dan Paladin, and the game was programed by Tom Fulp, the founder of Newgrounds. Basically, you’re an yellow alien and blast away FBI agents to get back the to spaceship they stole from you. It’s a very simple side-scrolling shooter game, but in contrast to the design of the big headed cute alien with huge eyes it’s unbearably hard. The game was later available for various consoles such as Xbox 360 (XBLA), Xbox, PS2, GameCube and Game Boy Advance.

To make his head I used a smaller pattern of a basic sphere I had.

He's got a HUGE head!

30mm doll eyes seem very nice on him, don’t they? (Pretty much the biggest doll eyes you can find)

He's got HUGE eyes!

I used gold/yellow pipe cleaners for his antenna and I made two yellow smaller spheres and sew them onto the antenna.

I put one pipe cleaner through inside his head.

I made the body, similar to the cube head guy from Game #3.

The red tag is for "AnnaTheRed" tag. This was before I stiched the kanji for "Red" (赤) in.

He also has HUGE feet!

I used a black stitching thread for his mouth, and that was supposed to be it!

Stitching the mouth was fun.

But after I made him, he seemed a bit lonely without his weapon… So I made his ray gun for him. I didn’t even make a pattern for his gun. I just slapped some fleece together.

He has a HUGE gun!

A bit lumpy, but that's okay.

He's ready to attack!

For more pictures of this plush, visit stuffed stuff: Alien from Alien Hominidset!

Check out more stuffed stuff set set on my flickr page.

Bento #67: Keepon
Created and eaten on: 11/9/2009

I didn’t make Keepon kyaraben before because it would be hard to make a kyaraben with just one character. But then I remembered “Ano-niku” bento (manga meat) where I made an entire bento with one theme. So I decided to try that for Keepon bento. Well, actually I didn’t really plan on making it until that morning.

I woke up in the morning, and it was way too late for a kyaraben. But the Keepon bento I had in my mind was supposed to be very simple, so I started making it anyway.

As usual, I put lettuce at the bottom of bento with sauteed renkon on top. I realized that the homemade frozen meatballs I had were pretty small, and weren’t enough for him. So I thawed frozen ground beef and made bigger meatballs. If I had made the meatballs the night before, this bento would’ve been a breeze… Making 15 meatballs from scratch in the morning before going to work seemed like such a waste of time. T_T Anyway, I used four meat balls to make two Keepons and I froze the rest.

Freshly made meatball-pon!

I made a hard boiled egg and mixed the yolk with rice to make the rice yellow. I wrapped the rice with plastic wrap, made two rice balls and stuck them together.

He looks like he's about to bounce, doesn't he?

Keepon is a very curious robot

I made two more rice balls mixed with ground black sesame seed and salt.

Black sesame seed-pon

I also made two hard boiled quail eggs, and stuck them together to make a white Keepon.

Quail egg-pon

It didn’t look like there was enough green in bento, so I boiled broccoli to make green Keepon.

Green and fuzzy broccoli-pon

When all the Keepon bodies were in place, I realized that there was still some space at the bottom. So I put grape tomatos and edamame to fill the space. I thought the shape of the tomatoes and edamame would go well with Keepon, and also I thought the bento needed more colors. I think it worked out fine.

After everything was ready, I sliced kamaboko (fish cake), and cut it out with a small bottle cap, and cut out seaweed with a punch hole for the eyes, and nose. Always put the face (small seaweed parts) at the end, otherwise it’ll get wrinkly before the photo shoot.

Nothing that complicated about this bento and they didn’t dance to music like a real Keepon, but my boyfriend still loooved it.

Keepon:
- rice mixed with egg yolk, kamaboko, seaweed
- rice mixed with black sesame seed and salt, kamaboko, seaweed
- meat balls, kamaboko, seaweed
- broccoli, kamaboko, seaweed
- quail egg, kamaboko, seaweed

Other food:
- renkon
- lettuce
- grape tomato
- edamame

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.

Bento #66: Noby Noby Boy
Created and eaten on: 11/6/2009

Noby Noby Boy is a strange game created by Keita Takahashi for Playstation 3. He’s also the creator of Katamari Damacy, so you can kind of guess how weird this game is. “Noby” or nobi means “stretch” in Japanese. I’m not even sure if it’s considered a game. You control a colorful worm thing called “BOY” on a floating platform and you have to make him stretch. That’s pretty much it. There are various objects on the platform and you can make him eat too. The interesting thing is that the game is connected online, and it’ll keep track on how long your BOY stretches.

You get points from stretching and the points will be submitted online via a character called Sun to another character called “GIRL” who will grow as more people stretch. Within a couple of days from its release, GIRL reached the moon, and a couple of months later, she reached Mars! As long as people play Noby Noby boy she’ll continue stretching. We played it for awhile, but since there’s no real objective other than stretching, we just started trying different things, like jumping through the clouds, or trying to wrap BOY’s body around many objects. How you enjoy this game is totally up to you.

Look! He's stretching!

Anyway, I had bought an avocado a couple of days earlier that was ripe and soft. So I decided to make rolls with avocado. I made one roll with avocado, imitation crab meat, and scallions (almost like a California roll). I made another roll with avocado, crab meat mixed with mayonnaise and chili pepper, and scallion. I cut different foods into strips and wrapped it around the roll. I used ham, thin omelet, seaweed, the red part of imitation crab meat, and I sprinkled sesame seeds and green seaweed on some rolls.

Easy and delicious.

Not very interesting collection of photos for this bento, but here's another one!

For the head and the butt, I put a bit of rice on a roll, made it into a ball, and rolled it in sakura denbu. (sakura denbu is sweet fish powder) I cut out cheese for the face, and put it on the head. For the eyes, nose, arms and legs I cut seaweed, and tomato skin for his mouth.

He's adorable and very stretchy.

Oh by the way, he farts too.

I cut the rolls and placed them in the bento box, and put boiled & seasoned broccoli at the bottom and the top of the bento box. Then I cut fake sausage (fish cake) into flowers and put them between the broccoli. I had boiled quail eggs not really knowing what to do with it… I cut the tip of it off to make a star shape, which didn’t come out that good. So I just cut out cheese into star shape and put it on top of the egg.

My effort to brighten up the bento.

I tried to make it more colorful by sprinkling sesame seed donuts shaped cheese on broccoli, but it didn’t really work out. Since it was so simple, I should’ve put more thoughts into details. Anyway, even if you don’t know what Noby Noby Boy is, this is still a very easy and simple way to dress up any ordinary rolls!

Noby Noby Boy
- rice with sweet fish flake, cheese, seaweed and tomato skin (for his face)
- rice, seaweed, avocado, scallion, imitation crab meat (body)
- rice, seaweed, avocado, scallion, imitation crab meat mixed with mayonnaise and chili powder (body)

Wrapped with…
- seaweed, ham, egg, imitation crab meat, sesame seed, aonori

Other food:
- broccoli and sesame seed
- fake sausage (fish cake)
- quail egg and cheese

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.

October 10th was my boyfriend’s birthday! We went out with our co-workers to a shabu shabu place in the East Village in NYC. Everything tasted soooo good. His birthday presents were still on the way, so I decided to make something to give him at the dinner the day before.
There was one character he’s been asking me to make a bento of, and that’s Keepon. The first time I saw Keepon was on youtube. I thought it was just another cute toy from Japan. Then I saw it on WIRED and learned what it was.

“Keepon is a small yellow robot designed to study social development by interacting with children. Keepon was developed by Hideki Kozima while at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Kyoto, Japan. Keepon has four motors, a rubber skin, two cameras in its eyes, and a microphone in its nose. Its simple appearance and behavior are intended to help children, even those with developmental disorders such as autism, to understand its attentive and emotive actions.” (from Wikipedia)

He may seem like a cute dancing toy, but he is a high-tech $30,000 robot. $30,000 was a little out of budget, besides BeatBots (where Keepon was created) only sells Keepon to professional institutional users.

So I decided to make it on my own. I used yellow fleece to make two small spheres and sewed them together. For his eyes and nose I cut felt out and glued them on. It wasn’t difficult at all, but I sewed the two sphere pieces wrong, so the seams on the sides ended up looking crooked. This is what happens if you don’t pay attention when you work on a simple project. T_T

Well, even though I messed it up a little bit, my boyfriend LOVED it. He couldn’t keep his hands off of Keepon. He’d make him move with his hands, like he does in the video. He has his Keepon on his desk and is always playing with him. I’ll probably make another one when I get more fabric. (Now I’ve got a cute little plastic nose that is perfect for Keepon too.) But until then his Keepon will keep him (and me) entertained.

I usually don’t put youtube videos on my blog, but I’ll make an exception for this little bouncy yellow fellow. The video is from Marek Michalowski’s youtube channel, he is the director of the video and also the founder of BeatBots where he created Keepon with Hideki Kozima. Check out more info on Keepon (where he’ll make an appearance, what he does for research, etc…) on BeatBots.

Without further ado, I give you Keepon dancing in the music video of “Don’t You Evah” by Spoon! (Please check out other videos he uploaded on his channel to see what Keepon’s up to!)