bento#6 Kaonashi

After my sad attempt at making Nekobus bento, I was looking for something very easy & fail-free to make.
I was going through images of characters from Ghibli films, and came across the picture of a tall black figure with black eyes and mouth on a white mask called Kaonashi (“No Face” in English version) from Spirited Away.

Bento# 6: Kaonashi, Kodama and Makkurokurosuke bento (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro/Spirited Away)
Created and eaten on: 10/1/2008

He has a face, yet, he's called Kaonashi (No Face)...

After I decided the main character for my bento, I started thinking about some other “easy” characters I could make.
I knew Kaonashi was going to be rice and seaweed, so I needed some other foods to eat rice with.
I’ve seen someone had made Makkurokurosuke with meatball before, so I decided to throw some in.
I was actually thinking about putting quail egg mini-Totoro again, but both Makkurokurosuke (he’s brown this time, though) and mini-Totoro were in my last bento, so I came up with an idea of turning an quail egg into Kodama.

I drew Kaonashi’s body shape on paper first, and put the paper on top of a sheet of seaweed, and cut along the line. I cut the face parts, and put them on cheese.
As you can see, there’s not much to explain about Makkurokurosuke and Kodama.
For the background, I just sauteed some renkon (lotus root). I really liked the pattern of layered renkon. And not only it looks pretty, but renkon is also amazingly delicious. Sauteed, fried, mixed in with meatball, any way you cook it, it’ll stay crispy.

Yummy or not, this bento turned out to be a very very dark bento, because of the color pallete. Black, white, brown, and green.
And of course, I didn’t realize it until I finished…

But later, someone on my boyfriend’s flickr page (that’s where you can see my most recent bento photos) commented “perfect for Halloween!” on this bento and that made me happy.
So, yes, this is a Halloween themed bento, and I’m sticking to it.

Still, Kaonashi is soooo easy and simple, I highly recommended it for bento beginners.
Just make sure you surround him with colorful flowers or something, so he won’t end up looking like a grim reaper. =P

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