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Shrimp & Avocado Salad Bento

As I mentioned last week, we took a trip to Kona this weekend. It broke the wallet to be sure, but was definitely worth it to take a vacation and see all the family I haven’t seen in forever. It probably would have been nicer if my little Buddy wasn’t such a ball of terror at night, but I can’t blame him for having what appeared to be a hard time sleeping in a strange place. Plus, I dragged everyone up into the boonies of Kona to go to a bon dance, so that likely didn’t help, haha.

Since I wasn’t home all weekend I didn’t get a chance to shop for food so I ended up making a salad for today. It’s just as well since I ate a whole lot of cookies and bad foods over the weekend. (we went to Mrs. Barry’s Cookies) I did discover that I sure stock a whole lot of salad foods in my fridge.

On the bottom where you can’t see I have finely chopped romaine lettuce, celery, and edamame. On top I have cucumber slices, radish slices, sakura shaped ham, shrimp, avocado, grape tomatoes, and sakura carrots. This is a pretty big bento box so it’s a nicely sized salad and with the 3 fruits (1 plum, 1 nectarine, 1 banana) I brought along with a bag of Smart Pop popcorn, that should be more than enough to tide me over for today. All Core salad, so I’m on the right track for this week!

The bon dance we went to was at this temple called Kona Koyasan Daishinji Mission (in Holualoa, up on the mountain, basically) and it was a nice, cute bon dance. We got there when they were taking a break for dinner, which oddly appeared to be free for all attendees. Mr. Pikko says he saw some lamers leaving with plates of food. We had just eaten so we didn’t take anything. Their towels were free though, so I took two of those as I like to sort of collect those. They had a small yagura tower and the drummers were at the foot of it rather than inside it. They played some great songs and the drummers usually beat to each one, making them all pretty entertaining.

I took video of a lot of it and it was a good thing too because I was able to capture on camera one of the most hilarious and hip dances I’ve ever seen. They had a man announcing each song and he goes, “Next up we have “Yeaaaah!” and I thought eh? Then they start up “Yeah!” by Usher and all the old ladies in kimonos are dancing to Usher and saying, “Yeah!” Once I find my Adobe Premiere cd I am so putting that up for people to see. It was their favorite song, they played it three times!

Their last song was Fukushima Ondo and sadly, there was no one there to play the flute for it. Still, I got in and danced (once again carrying Baby Girl). There was a small group of kids there that were trying to get a “betcho” started, but didn’t do so well since there weren’t too many people. It died out right after the first “Betcho, betcho, betcho! Yo, yo, yokoisho!”. Still, I was still happy to hear them trying! My dad says he saw a special on tv about the betcho and I was kinda bummed I missed it. Hopefully I can figure out who made it and find it online somewhere.