Nice to bite into – but leave it alone!
Japan is famous for deceptively real food imitations. Instead of on menus, restaurants advertise their dishes with copies in the shop window. Foreigners appreciate that – for them there is also fake food as jewelry.
Hair clip in bacon look: With this accessory you will definitely stand out
Source: Katharina Koppenwallner
WToday we’re going to have a joke. Or rather a joke – the bacon loop with fried egg shown is completely unsuitable for consumption, as it is a hair clip decorated with an imitation foodstuff. Hair clips are also available in the form of Japanese rice dishes or decorated with sushi bites. All are made of plastic and all come from Japanese manufacturers who specialize in producing deceptively real-looking food.
In Japan this is a 90 million US dollar industry, and no restaurant can do without these customer catchers. Instead of a menu, there are three-dimensional copies of the dishes on offer in shop windows all over Japan. This is especially useful for foreigners who do not understand Japanese, and local customers know exactly what to expect.
The food that isn’t is called in Japan shokuhin sanpuru, in German “pattern”. There is nothing like it in the whole world, so it is not surprising that Sanpurus are among the most popular souvenirs from Japan. Originally, Sanpurus were custom-made products for restaurants, but only after demand from tourists are they also produced as key rings, mobile phone cases or hair clips.
How fake food caught on in Japan
Sanpurus appeared in Japan after 1945 when more and more foreigners came into the country, especially US soldiers – and stood like ox in front of the mountain in front of the Japanese menus. There were no English-language menus at the time, nor were there any color photographs.
Restaurants in Japan display replicas of the food they serve in their shop windows
Quelle: pa / Cezary Wojtkowski
The models are made from plastic, resin or silicone in small-scale manual work. Practically everything that you can eat and drink is made: sushi, ramen soup, puffer fish, ice cream, beer. The production of a single dish can take up to a week, so the Sanpurus are correspondingly expensive. Ten times the price of the real dish is common.
The first step in production is to create a shape for the food to be depicted. As a rule, the frozen original dish is used for the impression. If you then have a silicone mold, it is filled with liquid resin or plastic and cured in the oven. The next and most important step is the lifelike painting by hand or with airbrush. The entire production in Japan is an apprenticeship with three years of training.
Deceptively real models are available for practically everything that you can eat or drink – including ice cream
Quelle: pa/All Canada Photos/Oleksiy Maksymenko
The father of the Sanpurus is Iwasaki Takizō, who founded his company in 1932, which still holds 60 percent of the market share for Japanese plastic food. Iwasaki started with an omelette that he even used to deceive his wife. This master model can be found in the „Sample Village Iwasaki“ visit.
If you want to stock up on Sanpurus in Japan, a visit to Tokyo’s Kappabashi Dogugai kitchen utensil district in Asakusa is a must. Without a visit to Japan, the bacon loop costs fakefoodjapan.com by $ 30. The slogan of the Iwasaki Takizō company is by the way: “Our copies are snapshots of the food at its most appetizing moment. They look more realistic than real food. ”This concept of reality can of course be discussed. So all in all a highly philosophical product.
Forks and chopsticks hang here all by themselves
Those: Getty Images / Eri Morita
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