Bento #66: Noby Noby Boy

I had a day off last Friday to get ready for a birthday party the following day. It was for an adorable 3 year-old boy of our close friends. I had a whole day to make Totoro cream puffs and chocolate covered Domo-kun marshmallows. I didn’t have to wake up early, but for some reason I got up very very early. So I decided to take this opportunity
to make a kyaraben! But I hadn’t made kyaraben in a while, so I wanted to ease myself into making kyaraben. I thought about making Totoro, but I wanted to try making something different… “Simple but different” gave me this idea.

Bento #66: Noby Noby Boy
Created and eaten on: 11/6/2009

Noby Noby Boy is a strange game created by Keita Takahashi for Playstation 3. He’s also the creator of Katamari Damacy, so you can kind of guess how weird this game is. “Noby” or nobi means “stretch” in Japanese. I’m not even sure if it’s considered a game. You control a colorful worm thing called “BOY” on a floating platform and you have to make him stretch. That’s pretty much it. There are various objects on the platform and you can make him eat too. The interesting thing is that the game is connected online, and it’ll keep track on how long your BOY stretches.

You get points from stretching and the points will be submitted online via a character called Sun to another character called “GIRL” who will grow as more people stretch. Within a couple of days from its release, GIRL reached the moon, and a couple of months later, she reached Mars! As long as people play Noby Noby boy she’ll continue stretching. We played it for awhile, but since there’s no real objective other than stretching, we just started trying different things, like jumping through the clouds, or trying to wrap BOY’s body around many objects. How you enjoy this game is totally up to you.

Anyway, I had bought an avocado a couple of days earlier that was ripe and soft. So I decided to make rolls with avocado. I made one roll with avocado, imitation crab meat, and scallions (almost like a California roll). I made another roll with avocado, crab meat mixed with mayonnaise and chili pepper, and scallion. I cut different foods into strips and wrapped it around the roll. I used ham, thin omelet, seaweed, the red part of imitation crab meat, and I sprinkled sesame seeds and green seaweed on some rolls.

For the head and the butt, I put a bit of rice on a roll, made it into a ball, and rolled it in sakura denbu. (sakura denbu is sweet fish powder) I cut out cheese for the face, and put it on the head. For the eyes, nose, arms and legs I cut seaweed, and tomato skin for his mouth.

I cut the rolls and placed them in the bento box, and put boiled & seasoned broccoli at the bottom and the top of the bento box. Then I cut fake sausage (fish cake) into flowers and put them between the broccoli. I had boiled quail eggs not really knowing what to do with it… I cut the tip of it off to make a star shape, which didn’t come out that good. So I just cut out cheese into star shape and put it on top of the egg.

I tried to make it more colorful by sprinkling sesame seed donuts shaped cheese on broccoli, but it didn’t really work out. Since it was so simple, I should’ve put more thoughts into details. Anyway, even if you don’t know what Noby Noby Boy is, this is still a very easy and simple way to dress up any ordinary rolls!

Noby Noby Boy
- rice with sweet fish flake, cheese, seaweed and tomato skin (for his face)
- rice, seaweed, avocado, scallion, imitation crab meat (body)
- rice, seaweed, avocado, scallion, imitation crab meat mixed with mayonnaise and chili powder (body)

Wrapped with…
- seaweed, ham, egg, imitation crab meat, sesame seed, aonori

Other food:
- broccoli and sesame seed
- fake sausage (fish cake)
- quail egg and cheese

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

Tagged as: broccoli, crab meat, eggs, katamari damacy, Keita Takahashi, Noby Noby Boy, quail egg, sakura denbu, sausage, sushi, sushi roll