me and rabbit April 18, 2009

Sorry to disappoint you, but no bento blog today, but I just wanted to write this post, mainly to post this particular picture of me. As you can see on the “press” page, I’ve done a couple of interviews about my bento. Almost always asked for a picture of me. I guess it’s like the “author’s photos” in a book, but I usually tell them I’m not comfortable giving them the most recent picture of me, and I’d offer a favorite picture of myself.

I was probably 3~4 years old. I was at the amusement park in my hometown. I just love this picture. Me with a sinister smile and not-so huggable looking rabbit in his dirty rabbit suit.  The way rabbit’s head is tilted and cut off from the picture makes it even eerier.

One time when I had a game magazine interview I offered this picture , but they told me that the picture was too old so they didn’t use it. =/
I was recently invited to “beautiful ladies behind the bento!” group on flickr. It’s a group where bento makers post their own pictures. I was honored to be invited, and I thought it was a cute idea, so I joined. The leader of the group, texasmomof4 (Donna) was kind enough to let me submit this “me and rabbit” picture.

When someone put a picture of one of my bento on reddit, people started discussing all sorts of stuff about me. Some people said I was probably a lonely housewife living in Japan, making bento for her husband because her life is so miserable and making bento was the only thing that can make her happy, and went on about how women in Japan are almost forced to be domesticated after they get married. HA! Back then, I was still mostly known as “kickintheheadcomic’s (my boyfriend’s flickr account name) girlfriend”, and some people were curious to see what I looked like. Someone finally found a picture of me and posted a link to the comment section. I wasn’t really trying to keep my appearance secret from cyberspace, but I was glad that before this happened I made my “party pictures” private on my flickr. 😛

I quickly replaced my face with “Laughing man” from Ghost in the Shell as a very nerdy joke. More comments were added after that, complaining they could no longer see my face. Someone found another picture of me, and saved it on his computer, and uploaded it to his personal webspace so I couldn’t change it. I didn’t care about it so much, but I tried not to read comments after that. The pictures of me you can find online now are nothing weird or inappropriate. They are work related, so I decided not to hide them. The whole thing didn’t upset me at all, but it was very interesting to watch people’s comments and reactions about what they had though I was like. The internet is such a convenient and scary place, and definitely highly entertaining. 😀