Yesterday we spent an amazing afternoon in Asakusa, Tokyo, in a street containing specialised shops that will sell you everything you’d need if you were setting up a restaurant. Plastic window display food? Check. (The companies that do this are insanely cool — thanks, Lily, for the recommendation.) Display cabinets for said plastic food? Check. Uniforms for the chefs and waiting staff? Check. Chopsticks? Check. Bento boxes? Check. An interior designer that specialises in restaurants? Check. This might betray some super-nerdiness on my part, but wandering down this street has kinda been the highlight of my trip. (That and finding the “Salaryman Heroes II: Ultraman” package, which features lovingly rendered collectible toy dioramas of my favourite Japanese superhero, Ultraman, engaged in all sorts of mundane office-worker activities, like pouring beer for his monster-of-the-week boss, or falling asleep on the subway, his head resting on the shoulder of his monster-of-the-week neighbour.)
This kind of aggregation somehow reminded me of the unimaginably huge second-hand clothing shop that Hon showed us in Osaka — every item of clothing was sorted into insanely detailed categories (e.g. “bright green 80’s puffy jackets”). Knowing the arbitariness of these categorisations, and yet revelling in their flawless execution, gives me great pleasure.
plastic food street! you are lucky and i am envious! i saw a documentary once on the companies that make the plastic food — i believe they showed the making of tempura — and how you could bring your favourite food along and they would immortalise it for you. beats the time i covered a ritz cracker in clear nail polish (it was a real idea from a real craft book)… and it was in the tropics, and it decayed from inside out.