New Box, No Bento

No bento for me today as I took the day off so that I could drop the in-laws off at the airport and so that I can pick up the kids this afternoon. I have a lot of stuff to do today including stops at Fabric Mart so that I can find more material for my White Mage costume I'm making for the FFXI Fan Festival in November, the post office to mail out orders, Costco to buy fruits, Foodland or Marukai to buy food, and maybe the post office in town if I feel like going all the way down there to pick up my newest eBay purchases. What I'm looking forward to the most though is lunch.

Before I get to that though, I went to Marukai yesterday since Mr. Pikko was held up at work and said I was free to go if I wanted to so of course I had to go. They had new inventory in and had tons of this box similar to the Fine Will one everyone wanted:


I realize it doesn't look as stunning as the Fine Will one, but I still think it's a great color and a great box in general. This box is in the AIB store right now, so if you want to purchase one better grab it up soon! I don't have that many. (4) +_+ The good news of this new arrival at Marukai is that it means Marukai is buying the junk discontinued stuff from Skater, who makes awesome boxes. At least, that's what I assume happens with dollar store merchandise... I guess green isn't a very popular color in Japan? That's great news for me because I do think green is my favorite color bento box!

I had mentioned I was going to sell my Fine Will one on eBay to hopefully make a bit more money and I finally got around to doing so today. The listing can be found here.

Anyway, I mentioned lunch. Since I'm going to be at the airport, that's just a bit away from Kalihi so I'm definitely going to make a stop at Monarch Seafood. A few years ago I used to work in Kalihi and though as a little Japanese girly I was at first scared of working in what I'd only heard of as a "rough" neighborhood, I found that the plus of working there is all the great places you can eat lunch. There are tons of okazuya shops there. To the people who haven't heard of it, okazuya places are basically bento food stores where you go in and pick individual items to build your own bento lunch. You can read an article about it here.

If you look at the list at the bottom, there are 4 places in Kalihi! I've eaten at Gulick Deli and it's a bit oily for my tastes and I went to Mitsuba once but I got there at the tail end of lunch so there wasn't much left. I tried on several occasions to get the infamous Garlic Chicken from Mitsu-ken across the street from Mitsuba but since my tightass boss then was under the impression that lunch could be inhaled in 15 minutes and the line outside that place is always ten kinds of nuts, I never did get to eat there. In fact, that's how I ended up eating at Mitsuba.

Anyway, I'm not eating at any of these places though. Monarch Seafood is this small little fish market on a corner right across from the Kalihi Bank of Hawaii that sells the most awesome plate lunches. And while you're waiting of course you drool over their big selection of poke. I haven't eaten there in several years, so that's where I'm going today. The part that sucks is that their parking is as great as Waiola Shave Ice by the zoo: they have none. I'll post pics later or tomorrow!