Plastic Food: Not Just For Playing House

Eating in Tokyo has been an adventure.  With most menus being in Japanese, ordering can be challenging and usually involves playing a game of Charades with a very helpful waiter (who I am sure wishes I had just learned some more Japanese before I arrived in Tokyo).  Having a mini-dictionary with you is also helpful, but sometimes the writing is so small it is hard for the waiters to see the tiny Japanese characters in the dim restaurant light.  That is when a Japanese trend comes in handy.  What trend am I talking about?  Plastic food.

Plastic food on display outside of a Thai restaurant in Tokyo.

It is pretty common to see huge display cases outside of restaurants with full meals made of plastic on display.  These models are meant to entice customers and get them interested in the food the restaurant is serving.  The only problem is that the plastic food usually looks disgusting, and is nothing like the real food that is available inside. 

Sometimes the plastic food leaves you quite confused about what items are available inside the restaurant.

Sometimes the fake food does look real, and there can be a great amount of detail put into the plastic items.  There will be times when the plastic food looks so good, it definitely makes you want to check out what the real meal looks like.

Even desserts will be on display in plastic.  I think they look the most real and delicious!

Do you think restaurants in your city should start using plastic food to advertise their meals to customers?