Food Replicas | Teens' Photo Project | Child Research Net (CRN)

Food Replicas

Place	:	Kyoto
Taken by	:	T. S. (Doshisha International Junior/Senior High School)

Many restaurants and gift shops where they sell snacks etc. have food replicas. Restaurants usually have them placed near the entrance in a showcase like the picture on the left. The picture on the right is the way a gift shop usually have the food replicas shown.

This is one of the food replicas in a mall's restaurants. It is very realistic; people might not notice it is actually made out of wax. (It may be also made out of PVC or a high quality plastic.)
These food replicas in the picture to the left are Soba and Tenpura. They are also a Japanese culture.

Even a doughnut shop, which usually doesn't have a food replica, had one in front of their store.

Food replicas were first made in 1923. A department store in Tokyo asked a workman to make these wax replicas in order to have the customers chose their menus before getting inside a restaurant. and raise their turnover. Instead of having the actual food displayed, they are superior in a way that they are cheaper and more sanitary. For those merits, many restaurants started to use the food replicas for their display.
Today, you can find many of them displayed inside a mall or a normal restaurant in Japan; it is very common. It is probably not too much to say that these food replicas support Japanese restaurants.

Child Research Net would like to thank the Doshisha International Junior/Senior High School and Tomo S., student and author, for permitting reproduction of this article on the CRN web site.