Japanese Retail: Plastic Food and More

Japan continues to amaze me in all sorts of ways, be it in food, culture, infrastructure, or what have you. Today we popped in and out of a number of shopping areas here and there, and yet food still became a suprising little theme that kept popping up at mostly non-food-related stores. One of the first shops we hit up was the big Muji store in Ginza, which was certainly much bigger than the size of the Muji stores in Singapore, complete with an entire floor dedicated to furniture, kitchen supplies, and even their own-branded (or should I say, non-branded) LCD TVs and portable DVD players. The food section accordingly was multiple times the size of the Singapore ones, selling all sorts of things like dried fish in a bag. They also had an automated dry ice machine in case you needed that for whatever reason. They even had a bakery and so-called Meal Muji restaurant section, a bit akin to the cafes at Ikea with the Swedish meatballs.



Next up were the toys, which got very interesting. Shokugan, as best as I could make out, was kinda like a Japanese version of baseball cards: for about 200 Yen (US$1.70), kids could buy little boxes of tiny little plastic food (dangerously small enough for choking) and a little piece of gum. You don't know which specific piece you're buying until you open the box, and hence becoming a reason for you to buy more boxes to help build your collection. Hakuhinkan Toy Park, one of the biggest toy stores around, also suprisingly sold Kodomo beer...at a toy store! That was quite a shocker until I realized that it was a non-alcoholic beer (apparently it is a guarana-infused cola of sorts). Then again, is it a good idea to market faux-beer (complete with mugs and apparently marketing lines that apparently say stuff like "even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink") to children? No doubt this is a bit controversial.



Finally, we made our way down to Kappanbashi, not far from the Tawaramashi subway station. This is basically a street lined with kitchen supply stores, selling everything from basic pots and pans to the more interesting restaurant uniforms and even those red vertical Japanese ramen flags that one often sees waving proudly outside ramen shops around here. Our main reason for coming here though, was for the plastic food stores. Yup, that's right...you know those plastic food displays that one sees in the windows of Japanese restaurants? One can actually buy those things from a few stores on this street. And as realistic as the pieces all looked (these were definitely far bigger than the shokugan choking-sized toys for 200 Yen), they were surprisingly expensive. Most of the full-sized pieces (ranging from ramen to grilled fish and even fruit) ran close to 10,000 Yen (US$83) a piece...and that excludes the bowl or plate too!



After getting over a bit of the sticker shock though, I still ended up buying a piece of plastic sashimi (complete with a realistic mound of wasabi, shiso leaf, and shredded daikon) as well as a platic Yebisu beer in a glass, even though I had to scrounge around afterwards in the other shops to find a suitable plate to display this on. It definitely wasn't cheap, but hey, it's only in Japan (and I guess it's like people who spend a crapload of money on things like Lladro porcelain statues and stuff for display around the house...it's just that mine is plastic and looks like food rather than elegant figurines).