Food To Eat With Your Eyes

"Anything can be made" claims one of the many producer of plastic food.

In Japan, fake food industry represents a century of old crafting tradition and a multi billion business.

Restaurants proudly show inviting vitrines of hyper-realistic replicas of food and drinks. Why? Japanese like to "eat with their eyes". But what is really entertaining about it lies behind the scene, where extremely fascinating production techniques have been developed over time to create the most amazing results.

Liquid bio resins, silicone moulds and wax castings are used to create, basically, anything. Scoops of colored wax are spread above the water surface and wrapped into the shape of lettuce heads.

Red wax are poured on marbled patterns of white wax to create slices of beef.

Yellow twirls of liquid resin are drained on water to form tempura coatings to wrap around fake shrimps and vegetables.

The success of this business goes behind exposition samples, it became a real attraction for tourists, more and more interested in taking a quick learning course or just in buying fake food souvenirs of any kind.

Source: Vice, Dailybri, Gaijinpot, Japanology