Japan Visit - Food Displays

One thing you may notice when you visit Japan is the sheer volume of food displays outside of restaurants.  They've been around for as long as I can remember, but I always love seeing all of the different plastic foods because they really do look so real, haha.  I've seen countless TV programs in Japan about how these display foods are made, and they really do put in a lot of effort to make them look as realistic as possible.  It's also a great way for people that don't read or speak Japanese to easily decide where to eat or what to order, since you don't need to read menu to figure it out.

This is just a small part of the food display outside of a sushi restaurant (surprise) that we went to the day I arrived in Japan.

And here's the real sushi - not too much of a difference unless you're looking at them really closely, haha.

And here we have a food display outside of a Chinese restaurant inside of a department store, showing some of the entree options as well as the sides that come with certain set meals.

While these dishes are not in the previous photo, I thought it was pretty awesome that this Chinese restaurant offered so many different set menu options - I mean, who wouldn't want a small tonkotsu ramen as a side dish to the entree?  

Finally, we have a delicious shrimp burger from Mos Burger - and I didn't take a photo of the fake one, but at first glance it would be really difficult to figure out if this was real or fake, because both the display and the real burger look identical, haha.  And this is a fast food burger place - when's the last time you got a burger in an American fast food place and it looked just like the photo??  Especially the perfectly toasted bun, not smashed down into a sad sliver of bread, haha.  

These are just a fraction of the amazing food displays you can see everywhere in Japan - such a fun and practical way to figure out what you'd like to eat!!