Plastic Food Models and Fake Foods

December 1, 2008
Kyoto, Japan

There are plastic food models outside of many Japanese restaurants to show you what the restaurant offers and what the costs are. Some of these food models looks amazingly realistic and delicious. Which got me thinking about a culture where much of your visual sensory experience relating to your meal is “fake” or “simulated.” What effect does that has on the national psyche? the collective unconsciousness?

Then I got to wonder about the traveling sales men who goes from restaurant to restaurants to sell the owners updated or new models of the plastic foods. Where is the factory where they make these plastic foods? What about the factory workers who have to make the models and assemble them? Do you think the sales men has a big glossy catalog of plastic food options to choose from? Or do you think that the models are custom made to order for each restaurant? After all, I have seen quiet a bit of diversity in the arrangement of each models, even if the restaurants are all selling similar foods. Or do you think its a do it yourself kit that you can order? You get as many parts as you needs along with a large bottle of lacquer and you can arrange for the portions and presentation of the plastic foods as you see fit for your restaurant and when you are done, you pour the lacquer over it and wait for it to dry.

Then there are these miniature plush food replicas. Is it merely decorative? Or is it some sort of luck and prosperity kinda of talisman?

I am rather fascinated by all of these fake foods and if effect it has on the unconsciousness.