Our (U.S.-Japan) Neighbor Totoro Bento (26)

I rushed to make a bento today so I could submit it to the Bento Battle put on by Japan Society. I made it in an hour, took photos, emailed it, and ran to class with moments to spare. I got home only to see that the deadline has been extended to April 5th! I was working so fast that I didn’t realize one of the soot sprite eyes were crooked when I took the picture. This is only my second character bento and was so much harder than the previous one because it had so many tiny pieces. Maybe I will submit another entry.. any ideas?

Here’s the flickr set with all the entries.

Totoro made following anna the red’s tutorial, which uses ground black sesame seeds to color Totoro. Neko Bus is made from an inari zushi wrapper, he actually has little feet but it’s hidden in the broccoli. If I had more time I would have cooked the broccoli. The little soot sprites are just rice balls wrapped with nori. All the little nori pieces kept going all over the place. There must be a secret to making them stick to cheese!