Bento #77: the Moomins
Created and eaten on: 7/6/2010

I was actually surprised to see some people requested the Moomins. I grew up watching the Moomins the animated show, thinking that the Moomins were hippos and it was Japanese. But it turned out, the Moomins are actually trolls and from Finland.

“The carefree and adventurous family live in their house in Moominvalley, in the forests of Finland, though in the past their temporary residences have included a lighthouse and a theatre. They have many adventures along with their various friends.” (from Wikipedia)

There are many interesting looking characters in the Moomins, but I decided to focus on the ones I really liked. The main Moomin, simply named “Moomin”, his girlfriend the Snork Maiden, Snufkin, Little My (pronounced “mee”) and of course, Hattifatteners! (“Nyoronyoro” in Japanese).

*Trivia: Moomin’s girlfriend had no name and was just called “the Snork Maiden” but it was called “Non-non” in the Japanese series (and that’s the one I remember), but then the author complained that the name sound negative, so they changed it to “Florence” later.

To make the bento look like Moominvalley, I put lettuce around the bento box first.

Moominvalley is surrounded with nature.

For Moomin, I mixed rice with ground black sesame seed and and mixed it with rice and a little bit of salt.

I thought Moomin was a hippo when I was little.

For the Snork Maiden, I mixed rice with the yolk from a hard boiled egg. When I was done mixing the rice, I wrapped two different kinds of rice in a separate plastic wrap and molded into the shape of a Moomin.

Awwww aren't they lovely?

*Trivia: Snorks are identical to Moomintrolls. The difference is Snorks come in different colors, and they can also change color according to their mood and feelings.

I wrapped mashed potato in plastic wrap, made the shape of Snufkin, and put it in the bento. For his face I cut out a half-circle from ham and put it on the mashed potato. Then I cut seaweed into the shape of his signature hat with scissors, put it on a slice of cheese, and cut the cheese around the seaweed. After I put his hat on his head, I cut cheese for the feather in his hat.

"One can never be truly free if one admires someone else too much."

For Little My I used leftover yam from the Lorax bento. I made a tear drop shape with a small oval shape using plastic wrap, and put it in the bento. Then I cut out ham in the same shape I used for Snufkin, and put it on her face.

She looks so mischievious.

I used a toothpick to make the lines on her hair.

For meat/veggies, I made my usual asparagus and carrot wrapped with bacon to make flowers, and put them in the bento.

I cheated and used a cutter for the flowers.

And those Hattifatteners… They’re white long living things with a lot of arm-like things on the side. They have eyes but no mouth, and they don’t talk but kind of move their body around to communicate. I cut fish cake into their shape, cut cheese for their eyes and put black sesame seeds for the pupils.

Later I learned that they travel in odd numbers... T_T

After all the characters were put in place, I stuck some asparagus and broccoli to fill empty spaces, made flowers with carrot, fish cake and cheese. Then I made everyone’s eyes with fish cake and seaweed.

As I was writing this blog post, I realized something… Something very embarrassing.

But I was in such a rush!

I forgot to put the blond hair on the Snork Maiden!

So I suppose Moomin is just hooking up with some random Snork in my bento.

Or…

There I fixed it.

If you like it, you might also like this site.

Aside from the horrible mistake I made, I do like my Moomins bento. The Moomins’ facial expression reminds me of Totoro. I guess Moomintrolls are kind of like European Totoro.

Only after I made the bento, I found out that Moomins the movie is coming out this summer! I’ve actually seen the music video of Bjork with footage from the movie before, but I thought it was just made for her video, and didn’t realize it was actually from the movie!

“Moomins and the comet chase” will be in theaters on August 2010, which is only a couple of weeks away! The movie is in 3D, but not the usual 3D. It’s done in claymation style!! I think it’s amazing that someone’s still making claymation films where other studios are rushing to make everything in CG/3D (with glasses).

Read more about the movie at the official site -> http://www.originalmoomin.com/

If you’re a fan of the Moomins or a fan of good old claymation style film, you should definitely check it out!

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

It wasn’t easy by any means, but it was a lot of fun. I initially picked the Lorax by Dr. Seuss but after I got an extension for the deadline, I decided do the Moomins as well.

I’m usually against taking requests for bento, but that’s because it’s hard to make something that I don’t know too much about. Little details make a huge difference when making kyaraben, and it takes a lot longer than usual to plan and make a bento based on something you aren’t familiar with.

I’ll first do a blog post about the Lorax since it was my first pick.

Bento #76: the Lorax

After I decide to do a bento of the Lorax, I watched a video of the Lorax, gathered reference images, and studied what makes the world of the Lorax “Lorax-like.” His beard, the pile of rocks, Truffula trees, Humming Fish, Swomee Swans, Bar-ba-Loots (which I couldn’t make), the Once-ler’s house, and his green arms.

For the green field, I mixed rice with sea kelp furikake (seasoning), and for the sky, I mixed rice with black sesame seed.

I cut meatballs in half and buried them into the rice for the top of the Truffula tree. I tried making Truffula trees fluffy, but it didn’t really work out, so I used a cutter to cut out cheese and carrot and put it on the meatball. For the pink one, I made a small rice ball and put sakura denbu (sweet pink fish flakes) all over it. Then I cut an egg sheet to make the tree part.

For the bush around the tree, I cut purple cabbage into thin strips, dressed it in vinegar and sesame oil, and left it sit until it softened. Then I put it around the bottom of the tree.

I knew I didn’t have enough meatballs so at the lower part of the bento I cooked asparagus and carrot wrapped it with bacon, and grape tomato with corn.

For the pile of rocks, I carved a potato, fried it, and put it on the rice. It’s the same way I made the body of the Big Daddy from BioShock bento.

I made mashed yam, shaped it like the Lorax and put it above the pile of rocks made with potato. Then I cut an egg sheet for his beard, and used a straw to cut out carrot for his nose.

I made Humming Fish with cheese and Swomee Swans with egg sheet and cheese.

I previously had cut seaweed into the shape of the Once-ler’s house, so I put it on cheese, and cut it around the seaweed. To finish it, I cut fishcake for clouds and everyone’s eyes, put black sesame seeds on, and put pieces of broccoli for the Once-ler’s arms.

The hardest thing about this bento was that there were sooooooo many small pieces of food, which I couldn’t prepare in advance because the cheese would either melt or get hard, and seaweed on any food would get wrinkly.

The story in this bento may not be consistent with the book since I have all Truffula trees, the pile of rocks and Once-ler’s house in the same scene, but this was the best I could do.There are a lot of things I wanted to do better in this bento, but I do like how the Lorax came out.

"I speak for the trees!"

If you’re just making the Lorax, it’s very easy! You just need mashed yam, a tiny piece of carrot, cheese and black sesame seeds. For his beard, you can use cheese instead of egg sheet!

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

I have an Etsy store now!

I’ve been wanting to focus more on original plush stuff, and with encouragement from my boyfriend, I decided to make a store on Etsy.
Each piece is hand-sewn by my hands with love.

I have one kind of plush in the store so far, and it’s “That Meat”! (a.k.a Manga Meat)

Q: What is ‘That Meat’?

A: You know the meat you see in anime and manga? That meat.

If you’re interested and snuggle with your own plushy meat visit my Etsy store!

I managed to make the bentos for the Dream Bento Contest! You can see them at EpiCute and My Food Looks Funny.
They just posted them today, and I’ll write a blog post about them later.

Anyway, those who are following me on Twitter might know that July 3rd was my birthday!
Since it was my birthday, I tried to tweet as much non-important information about what I was doing as I could (with a total of 4 tweets! I guess I’m very bad at this.), because other days I probably wouldn’t have much stuff to tweet.

My boyfriend made me a birthday card as usual.

My boyfriend, me, my cat and her favorite/creepy panda toy

He got me a new digital camera, the Panasonic Lumix ZR1!

Red and shiny

I own a Canon PowerShot SD600 and always carry it in my bag. My boyfriend uses a Canon Rebel XT to take photos of my bento, and I also have an old SLR which I rarely use. I usually don’t get new gadgets until they completely break down, but I’ve been complaining about how it’s hard to take photos with my PowerShot in low light. So he got me a Lumix because it’s supposed to be a good low light camera. It’s got all sorts of settings, from portrait setting with a slimming effect, babies, food, pest, etc… I still haven’t figured out what everything does yet, but I’m going to learn everything about my camera this time!

We had one more movie from the NY Asian Film Festival we needed to see, and we decided to go see some other movies we haven’t had the time to see. The first movie we went to see on Saturday was Jackie Chan’s new film, “Little Big Soldier”, starring Jackie Chan and also was written by Jackie Chan.

Sorry for the quality of the photo. This was taken inside the dark theater with my cell phone camera.

It was surprisingly well written for a martial artsy movie based on Chinese history. Unfortunately, Jackie doesn’t show off his moves that much in this film but we enjoyed it. Like all his other films there were outtakes in the end of the film. The film itself kind of ends on the sad note, so the outtakes were especially funny.

The second movie we saw was “Iron Man 2.” I know we’re very late, but we don’t like crowded theaters so we tend to watch blockbuster movies a while after it comes out. The movie was fun as we expected.

The third movie was “Prince of Persia.” It’s based on a video game and had a huge budget so we wanted to see what they came up with. When they were promoting this film, there was no mention about the game, so we weren’t expecting to see any game elements in this film other than Dastan (the main character, played by Jake Gyllenhaal) jumping across wooden poles and some climbing. So we giggled when the camera showed what the characters needed to do to do stuff like open doors, sometimes with narrated instructions by the princess just like in the game. In some scenes, it almost felt like we were watching the tutorial for the game. We felt like the movie had too many climaxes and too many “looking into the eyes, about to kiss” scenes. It was pretty silly.

Not so exciting photo of my movie tickets? But they have my birthday on them, so they're special to me.

After the movies, we went to Minca for dinner!

Best. Birthday Dinner. Ever.

We also went to Minca on my birthday last year. I usually don’t like eating hot food in hot weather, but ramen is an exception. Any season is good for ramen.

After dinner we stopped by at Best Buy where I bought myself “Super Mario Galaxy 2″ with a gift certificate my friend gave me for my birthday! I was encouraging/making my boyfriend play Uncharted 2 online multiplayer during the long weekend because they were doing a double-cash event where you could earn twice as much in-game cash as usual, and I love watching him earn money and level up. So we haven’t played Mario Galaxy 2 yet, but I can’t wait to play it!

Again, shot with my cell phone camera in the dark living room.

It was the best birthday ever! As usual.

This doesn’t have to do with my birthday, but we saw this posted ALL OVER in East Village.

I took this photo on July 3rd. The posters looked very new.

Walking from Union Square we probably saw at least 30 of them on the way to Minca (5th street between Avenue A and B). I can feel the owner is very desperate, and I know how it feels when your dog/cat goes missing. So I’m going to post it in here, hoping that people who live in NY and also read my blog tell their friends, and pay closer attention to a dog wandering on the street.

Well, I hope everyone had a great long weekend. Make sure you check the bentos I made for the Dream Bento Contest at EpiCute and My Food Looks Funny!

Oh noes!

(*It’s Shiva again in the photo. And my other old kitty Fu-jin in the back.)

The deadlines for many other projects and a business meeting (?) fell on around the same time, I just couldn’t do it. T_T Argh! I feel awful missing a deadline. And it’s completely my fault. But the people at EpiCute and My Food Looks Funny are very understanding and forgiving, and they extended the deadline to the 5th. So yes, I’m still making it. Or “them.”

All the projects I was super busy with are non-work related, so I’m tired but not stressed out and I’m super excited! Hopefully I can write about these projects in the future.

I’ll be back to blog more later.

Have a happy fourth of July, everyone!

There are so many great ideas on there, but many of the bento already exist/were created by someone else or me. Later I’ll post the links to the ones from the list which I made.

Hopefully, if nothing goes wrong, I’ll make and post about the bento I picked tomorrow, July 1st.

Nothing related to the contest, but I now have a twitter account.
Initially I signed up to check out the events & announcements on my favorite sites and game developers’ blogs and keep in touch with my old super busy friends and my brother. (Twitter is much more popular than Facebook in Japan) But since I have an account now, I decided to use it to announce a new blog post and not really blog-worthy but twitter-worthy photos and such.

This photo also has nothing to do with the contest either. This was three apartments ago. I had to move out because every morning, a cat would come out of the faucet.

Unfortunately, “annathered” was taken, so I’ll be the one and only, ” TheAnnaTheRed “.

Who knew the day I say this would come, but… Follow me on Twitter!

This was two apartments ago. This place had the same problem like the previous on, a cat from the faucet. It's so hard to find a good apartment without problems in NYC.

*She was one of my cats, and now she lives with a friend of mine.*

“The contest is simple: revamp a tee into something that shows off your own style, and give it a Castle Crashers spin!”

With three over-sized cheap black shirts, white and black felt, and a couple of hours, I became a troll!!

Troll from Castle Crashers

These little black fellas are one of the enemies you fight in Castle Crashers. They have big bulging eyes and they’re always showing their teeth.

It was very very easy to make this shirt. I sewed a big black shirt to my size, cut up other black shirts into strips and sewed them on the front of the shirt.

When I put the eyes on, it looked so ridiculously cute that my boyfriend and I both couldn’t stop laughing.

I mean, look at those eyes!

To take pictures in a troll-like scenery, we went to a nearby park. I made the eyes detachable and put them on the shirt at the park so people wouldn’t think I was dressed up as a pale gorilla or exposing myself.

Oh noes! A troll!

Where are those castle crashers?!

Where did they go?!

I couldn't stop giggling posing with this awesomely cute troll shirt on.

Troll shirt without eyes

Actually, even if you remove the eyes and mouth off, it still is a very cute sleeveless shirt.

For more pictures of this Troll shirt, visit Troll shirt set on my flickr!

The biggest video game conference in the world, E3, is going on right now. Hopefully I can find something that inspires me from E3. And another reason… Mr. Hayao Miyazaki needs to make more wonderful films!!!

Just when I was feeling bad for having no new kyaraben to show to the people who visit my blog, I got an email from someone from EpiCute & My Food Looks Funny. They asked me if I’d be interested in a contest where users request what kind of bento they want to see, and I pick one and make it.

I said that I wouldn’t take requests for bento before… but! EpiCute & My Food Looks Funny are sites of the Cheezeburger network and many of their websites are my favorite. They provide me endless entertainment during lunch at work.

Long story short. I decided to do it.

To be honest, I’m not very sure who would want me to make food (except my boyfriend, of course), but if you have a great idea you want me to make with food, leave a comment on the contest page. Don’t leave your request on this page!

EDIT: I should mention that you can leave your ideas on TWO sites. They are both part of Cheezeburger network, and it doesn’t matter which site you leave your comments on.
I will read ALL comments!

Dream bento contest! (EpiCute)

Dream bento contest! (My Food Looks Funny)

As stated on the page, there are two guidelines.

- No realistic food art of a person (i.e. celebrities, political figures, etc.)

- No vulgar themes (i.e. genitals, bodily functions, etc.)

I’m very interested and afraid to see what kind of requests people will come up with…

Again, if you have a great idea you want me to make with food, leave a comment on the contest page. Don’t leave your request on this page!

Sunday was a shorter work day than Saturday. It was still busy but I was excited because I was going to meet someone very special this day.

Do you remember the Katamari forever contest I won last year at the gaming website, Penny Arcade, got a wrong prize by a mistake, got in touch with the second prize winner and got the right prize (and then some) in the end?

Keita Takahashi, the creator of Noby Noby Boy and Katamari Damacy, said that he hoped that the two winners would meet someday, and connect the scarves. He is such an amazing game creator and great person, and I really respect him. It turned out that the other winner happened to live in Toronto. I was going to Anime North for work, but the plans for Anime North kept changing, so I couldn’t email her until a couple of days before I left for Canada. It was Memorial Day weekend, and I had no idea what her schedule was. But I just gave it a try anyway.

Once I got in Canada, we texted back and forth several times, and… well, it happened! Even though she wasn’t feeling well, she came to see me at Anime North!

Without further ado, I give you the proof of a miracle!

The moment has come!

Trying to figure out how to connect them.

Ta-Da!

The scarf is actually really really long.

Head and Butt

He's ready to stretch some more!

I wish I could’ve hung out with her more, but I was working, she was feeling under the weather and I was leaving Canada the very same day.  We still had a great time. I’ll definitely visit Canada to hang out with her someday. Maybe next time will be in the winter, so we don’t look crazy wearing a knitted scarf in 80 degree weather. I’d like to thank Kayla, Mr. Keita Takahashi, and Jeff at Penny Arcade for this amazing experience!

For some strange reason, writing this post is making me want to make Howl’s Moving Castle food…

For more pictures of Noby Noby Boy Scarf and other Katamari Damacy & Noby Noby Boy related stuff, visit We <3 Keita Takahashi! collection on my flickr.;)

I did a quick preview of Anime North when I did Ghibli Feast #8: the Castle of Cagliostro but Anime North was such a blast! Not only was the convention full of good people of Canada (and people from all over the world), but I got to meet with very special friends, old and new!

Our flight to Canada was at 8:00 am on Friday morning. It was one of those small airplanes but we were very comfortable and excited about the trip, except… when we were filling out our customs papers we realized that we had a lot of nuts! I’ve traveled to different countries many times, but it’s a less than 2 hours flight, and it totally slipped our minds. We actually bought a LOT of nuts the day before so we could munch on them while we worked. T_T Nothing makes us sadder than wasting food. After we realized that we had to throw away the nuts, we ate as many nuts as possible on the airplane. We literally STUFFED ourselves with nuts.  Throwing away the delicious nuts was so hard for us.

Customs at the airport was smooth and quick, and they didn’t even check our bags. Sure, we could’ve just not said anything about the nuts, but I remembered the one time I was coming back from Japan, and completely forgot that I had in my bag delicious Japanese oranges my grandma gave me for the trip. They found them, tossed them, and then they took me to a different section and opened EVERY piece of luggage I had and took out EVERYTHING from my bag, examining each item. They even brought a sniffing dog too. I felt embarrassed and guilty for wasting the time of the security people. In fact, my boyfriend did a comic strip about this.

The first thing we realized when we got there was “Canada is HOT.” It felt like it was hotter than NYC. We all thought Canada = always cool. Also on the way to the convention center, we saw a very cute all-in-one trashcan on the street.

Litter, Recycling, Recycling (people in Canada are very serious about recycling!) and cigarettes. You can push the pedal or push to open.

We ate lunch by the convention center before we set up our booth.

Portabella mushroom sandwich at a grill/bar place called "Milestones." Not very exciting looking, but it was very simple and light. Great for my stomach stuffed with nuts. Also the bread was surprisingly soft!

After we set up our booth, we worked 5:00PM~10:00PM. We didn’t know what to expect from Anime North at all, but boy we were super busy! (on Friday night, mind you)

Very consistent flow of people. A lot of people!

When we closed our booth, it was about 10:20 PM. Who knew the nights in Toronto are shorter than New York? Maybe because it was near the airport, but most restaurants were closed, and a couple of minutes before they stopped taking orders for the night we got into a restaurant called “Montana’s” across from our hotel. We were in such a hurry, I forgot to take pictures of the food I ate. But I did take pictures of the doodles we drew on our table. (They brought us crayons.)

My boyfriend drew "Dude", the character from his comic.

A snork and Quack from Peep and the Big Wide World by my friend, Joe, a.k.a. Lupos.

A snork by my friend, Logress.

Quincy, the iguana from Fox Trot by my boyfriend.

At the lower bottom left, I was drawing the very bizarre Totoro knock off toy I saw in Chinatown. It had the face and the color of Totoro, but the body of a wiener dog. I also drew some meat and liquid metal slime.

Saturday was a looooooooooong day. It started 10:00 in the morning, and ended 8:00 at night. It was, as we expected, twice as busy as Friday. But after work, I got to hang out with two of my old friends whom I haven’t seen in ages.

I had photos of my friend’s car in my previous post, but it’s so pretty, I’m going to post them again!

After a long day of work, we got back to the hotel. When we were walking to the hotel from the parking lot. We witnessed a big LARPing session going on at the hotel we were staying at. What’s “LARPing” or L.A.R.P? It’s short for Live Action Role-Playing game. Basically, you play any fantasy role in an actual setting and battle with other LARPers. Kind of like a Renaissance fair but in a battlefield. For more details, see the wikipedia entry for L.A.R.P. My friend (who strangely knows a lot about LARPing) was saying some of them seem to actually know how to LARP. (Probably the instructors of this event.) He was impressed by the numbers of girls in this event. If you find a box that’s labeled “Capes” in your boyfriend’s house, he might be LARPing.

LARPing in session! I snapped this photo as I hid behind the very skinny tree.

I had photos of my friend car in my previous post, but it’s so pretty, I’m going to post them again! It’s a Fiat500, Cinquecento, a.k.a. Lupin the Third’s car.

She looks like she's got dimples.

Shiny metal and shiny leather.

After a long day of work, we got back from the hotel, tried to open a wine bottle with a shoe. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful. But we think the surface wasn’t hard enough, and we didn’t use the right kind of shoe. We ended up using the handle of a hanger. Of course, we put the handle back in the hanger, and we didn’t break anything! Search “wine bottle” and “shoe” in Youtube. You’ll find tons of video where people opening a wine bottle with a shoe. Silly? Useless? Maybe but who knows it may come in handy someday.

The laughing in the background was my old friend/ex-partner in crime (before she got married and moved to San Diego). She misses hanging out with us, as much as we miss hanging out with her, and as you can hear, she was so happy to hang out with us that night.

And guess what? The following day, Sunday was even more special!

To be continued…