Bento - 6 Catbus from Tonari no Totoro

I promised myself that I would be more creative this year so I decided to update the bento section in my blog today. Honestly, I love making bento but my problem is cleaning up afterwards. Since I am currently experiencing a glorious day, I decided to make something  that I have always wanted to make since I started blogging about my bento creations. If you are a big Ghibli fan like me, then you will definitely  enjoy this one, too.

For this bento, I made Catbus for Tonari noTotoro out of fried spam. The accent on the cat’s body includes potatoes for the eyes and windows, nori for the stripes and boiled egg for the mouth.  I also got chives, spring onions and sweet potato tops from the garden and made decors and side dishes out of them. For the flowers, I cut out yellow squash and slightly boiled them in salted water. I also inserted my sketch  so that I will have an idea on what to do once I assemble the bento. And look, there's also Olaf from Frozen about Catbus' sketch. He's going to be my bento project next. 

Cooking the side dishes and the spam took longer than usual.  I was afraid that the spam would break down if I am not too careful in handling them. I assembled everything on top of boiled rice and used some of the side dishes to prop the cat’s body. Applying the finishing touches is very easy and this is the part that I love the most. It looks like cat bus is happily strolling in the meadow. It is so ironic since it seems that he is the busiest character in the anime. Below are some pictures on how I assembled the entire bento in the lunchbox.

Honestly, I do not have the heart to eat any of the bento creations that I make so until now, my cat bus bento still sits in the fridge. I guess I will have to reheat it later for dinner but if someone wants to save me the trouble of eating it, then you are welcome to drop by the house. ^__^ 

Note: I just realized now that I am missing Catbus' whiskers. Oh well...