Tokyo Return-- Food Art

The girls get 3 weeks off for winter holiday and the thought of spending all that time in Singapore was not exciting enough.  Fred was busy with work so we decided to visit Tokyo again and see if it still had all the magic of last year's visit.

Tokyo is a beautiful city with tons of things to do and see.  After two visits staying inside the city limits, we still didn't see many areas of the city.  I imagine you could live here and still not see all the different sections of the city.

We did hit our favorite highlights again-- Harajuku Street and Shibuya (Tokyo Times Square).  Once again the H&M in Shibuya had summer clothes for 100 Yen which this year was about $.80USD.  WhooHoo what hot deals.  Of course we hit the crepe stands on Harajuku street for a yummy treats.

One thing that I want to share with you that I have only noticed in Japan is the food art.  Outside most restaurant are sculpture displays of the dishes they serve.  These are amazingly done and seem to be an art form.  

An entire menu -- including drink displays because I really need to know what my beer will look like!

Crepes and more crepes-  notice the tuna crepes at the bottom of the picture on the right. We only ate dessert crepes.

This is a typical display outside a restaurant, so you know what to order.

So, I did a quick search of Japan food art and it turns out it is a serious business. In fact, Japanese plastic food by the Maizuru Company was exhibited at London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 1980.  Regular competitions are held in making fake food dishes out of plastic and other materials.  The food displays are called sampuru, derived from the English word sample.  

The plastic food manufacturers fiercely guard their trade secrets, business is lucrative.  A single restaurant may order a complete menu of plastic items costing over a million yen.  Wow this is a serious job.

Besides food we saw two new neat areas:

The first was the Tokyo fish market (Tsukiji market).  This was a neat experience seeing the fresh fish alive/dead out for retail sale.  There was so much fish, it's hard to imagine all of it gets consumed.  We also saw frozen tuna being cut into rectangular slices- assuming this will be used for sushi at some restaurant.  We decided to buy a pack of fresh sushi- totally raw fresh tuna- I have to say-disgusting and way too fishy for me-- give me that piece that was frozen and a little more dried out.  However, Katie and Jen gobbled it up- and thought it just melted in their mouths.  

Our second new adventure was to Meiji Temple.  It is dedicated to Emperor Meiji who died in 1912.  The people donated 100,000 trees from all over Japan and voluntarily created a forest in Tokyo later the shrine was established in 1920.  It's hard to believe you are in Tokyo amongst all these trees.  

Temple entryway, lined with lanterns

Katie and Jen in front of the temple

Performance girls posing with us

Beautiful lanterns lining the walkways.

Decorative sake barrels-- ?? unsure why they are here??

Final thing to share with you was a Mexican restaurant we ate at was called La Jolla, just like in CA- they even had a CA costal map hanging- little slice of the US in Japan.  Of course not as good- gotta wait to get back to the US for some decent Mexican.