It’s funny that I keep a bento blog, live in the Philippines, and yet is one of the last people to blog about the upcoming Bento Making Contest sponsored by the Japan Foundation.

Sponsored by the Japan Foundation Manila, The National Bento Contest was created to encourage culinary creativity among Filipinos through the fusion of Japanese Bento and Filipino cuisine. Open to both culinary students and ordinary food aficionados, contestants will be required to prepare a single person bento for the competition. For complete rules, please visit the Japan Foundation webpage.

Anybody interested? If you are joining, let us know so we may cheer you guys on. As they say in Japan, “Gambatte!”

This week’s Bento Challenge was anything Hayao Miyazaki. Easy enough, I thought. Until I realized that I had exhausted my Hayao Miyazaki ideas with my previous bento, like the Calcifer Bento and the Spirited Away Bento. *facepalm* Well, never fear, quail eggs come to the rescue!

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Long time no bento! No new posts even. That one I have to apologize for, but the past few days have just been too busy. Mostly, I’ve been waking up with little extra time to pack lunch, so I’ve been subsisting on store bought meals. I was missing bento badly though, so I made it a point to wake up early yesterday to prepare one.

One song was playing in my mind as I was doing this lunch, “When the Moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s Amoreeee~~~” Heehee. Appropriate, isn’t it?

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For this week, Bento Challenge posed a very broad topic, Stars. I love broad topics since it turns the conceptualization process a challenge in itself. Rising to the plate is my entry for the Stars challenge, a Calcifer bento.

Calcifer is a fire demon from one of my favorite books, Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle. As the book was eventually turned into Hayao Miyazaki’s Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (Howl’s Moving Castle), I opted to model Calcifer from the anime rather than the book because it’s difficult to find blues and purples in food. Wait! How does that fit in with the theme? Well, I return the question to you guys. Onigiri for those who can make the theme challenge connection!

Guess the theme connection!
Note: For those who’ve neither read the book nor watched the anime, it can get spoilery. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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