No Face Yakisoba

This is a character from the film Spirited Away, one of my favorite films of all time. His name is No-Face; the spirit of having no personality.

No Face is wildly known as “No Face” to some of you, but in Japanese, the spirit’s name is actually “Kaonashi”, and it simply means, “faceless”.

To me, “Kaonashi” slightly differs from the “No Face” connotation, because he has no face of his own, so he has to absorb the faces of those around him, in order to pseudo-exist in his pseudo-reality, by developing new attitudes and opinions based on his surroundings. He is the reaction to all things around; -the copy and paste version of every action around him.

Hayao Miyazaki says, “No Face exists in everyone’s heart”, and I can not agree more. We all want our faces, some sort of identities of our own, but it’s such a scary thought; -wanting to exist. It’s so scary that I have to make a Halloween recipe out of this horror, that is my existential crisis. Perhaps I wanted to make some sort of awareness, with a tablespoon of soy sauce to flavor my sadness, but in the end, I always wonder how many of my people will ever want to face “No Face”. I admire Hayao Miyazaki for a reason; he makes me face my own “No Face”.

No Face is creepy. I don’t want him around. But there’s something about him that captures my attention. Maybe I know someone like him. Maybe I was dating one before. Maybe he acts just like my parents. Maybe he is a projection of my own rejection.

No Face…. what is no face? He is an unstable existence with no place in the real world. He has no independence, no place to live, and he belongs nowhere but someone’s needs and wants. He can only speak in the words of others who he picks up from, and he can not understand communications with other people.

But he knows how to react to money, because that’s what everyone wants, and if he thinks that he’s getting rejected, he explodes with rage and rampage.

Roughly summarizing, I think there are quite a lot of people who are more or less like him, in various degrees.

No-Face in the film appears in a semi-transparent state while shifting in and out of visibility. I made this recipe today, because I wanted to give him a taste of life, one step at a time. There are too many beautiful vegetarian recipes out there, and I have no desire to compete with their beauty. But I desire so desperately to put a light on someone like No Face, because I believe we need to talk about him, who he is, what he is, and how he is made. Perhaps mine is made with noodles and vegetables, but maybe some of you will understand what I really mean.

1: Make the body.
Cook rice and make a rice ball. Make sure your rice ball shapes like an egg. To make it easier, I like using plastic wrap when making rice balls. 2: Cover the riceball with dried seaweed, and wrap it.
Nori (seaweed) will stick to the rice with the moisture on your rice ball. Try squeezing the middle part like in these pictures, so Kaonashi will have a more defined body.
3: Make the limbs.
Cut the nori into thin squares and wrap them around on the thinly rolled rice. You can work on all the detailed parts later, like No face’s fingers, when you are building everything together on a plate. 4: Make the mouth. 
Cut the beetroot into an oval shape. Thinner the better, so it will easily sit on your rice ball.5: Cut the goat cheese into pieces. 
Make an oval shape for No Face’s face, then little squares for his teeth. 6: Assembling No Face.
Place the limbs under the body, then cut the tip of the limbs twice and make the finger parts. Wrap the whole No Face and rest it somewhere until you finish cooking Yakisoba. 7: Start working on Yakisoba!
Chop the veggies into small pieces like this.8: Stir-fry the veggies. 
Stir-fry the veggies until the onion color turns see-through. Flavor with freshly ground black pepper. 9: Wash the noodles.
Quickly run water over yakisoba noodles to separate the noodle. Usually, they are stuck together from the package!10: Add the noodles in the pan.
Lower the heat to medium and add noodles. Keep stirring and make sure not to burn the bottom of your pan! 11: Add the Yakisoba Sauce. 
Mix all together with the spatula.12: Place No Face on Yakisoba. 
Grab the No Face you created earlier and simply put him on top of the Yakisoba. Try placing some of the noodles on No Face’s mouth, so he would look a lot more real and grotesque. 
Some of you might have noticed, but this No Face I made today is the “rampaged No Face”, when he got all psychotic and swallowed everyone around him. If you are like me who wants to follow the original, I recommend adding Hijiki(a type of seaweed) on top of his head like this; because the rampaged No Face has hair on his head, if you are wondering what I’m talking about.
There you go, a plate of very mysterious No Face Yakisoba. This, by the way, was on a Japanese magazine for its Halloween editorial, and the editor told me, “It’s so disgusting! I love it”, and that made my entire day. *wink!*Here comes the eating part. I knew that it would make a horror scene but it really did look scary when I tried to slice him open with a knife. Strictly speaking, I now found it so interesting that he has two mouths. Perhaps the one that is on his mask isn’t really his mouth; -it could be the disguise, and the one outside of his mask carries his true voice.
I tried to cut it open, to see what was inside him, but it was just a really delicious rice ball, and next thing I knew, No Face was inside my stomach. No face was inside me.Eating No Face is definitely one of the most existential experiences of my life. And also scary. Really scary.

So if you are looking for anything scary, like you want to find a great recipe for Halloween, or something, I’d recommend making No Face Yakisoba.

Thanks for reading.
xo
-Yuki