When I think of beautiful food, I often think of Japan. That is why we welcome Becca to our series today! The Food As Art series is simply about the many ways food can be artistic or creative or inspiring or beautiful or weird.
Hello! My name is Becca. I’m Bethany’s friend and I’ve lived
in Japan for three years, and I’m about to start on a fourth.
Japan loves to turn their food into art. Sometimes visual
and sometimes in taste – who else would create a wasabi kit-kat?
Here I
am holding some carrot-grape swirl soft-serve ice cream.
I currently live in Hokkaido, which is the northern most
island in Japan. We’re famous for all kinds of produce, beer and . . . ramen!
The restaurant below made the shape of the island out of ramen bowls.
Japanese people can make art out of any foods.
Fish and veggies? Yes!
Indian food? Of course!
Quiche!
And of course they can make Japanese food into art as well.
This is Yaki-niku, which is Japanese style barbeque.
Japanese pickles, taste entirely different from the ones in
the US and they are made out of a greater variety of vegetables. In this
picture, there’s eggplant, cabbage, carrot, daikon, and cucumber.
I’d never even heard of tofu-cheese until we had it at a
dinner party. It was very pretty and pretty good, too. It gets dipped in the
sauce at the end of the plate.
Onigiri (rice balls) are the Japanese equivalent of a
sandwich – super convenient and people tend to take them for meals where they
are packing a lunch.
My favorite part of any meal though is dessert, and it’s
also what I tend to photograph the most.
Japanese desserts are often found at tea ceremony.
This one was found in Osaka. The dessert is yuzu-manju,
which has a bread-like outside and has sweet bean paste inside with yuzu (a
Japanese citrus).
Then, of course, there are foods that aren’t necessarily
Japanese, but have a spin on them I’ve never seen anywhere else.
My friend made this roll-cake when she came to my house for
dinner. It has a giraffe pattern in it!
Macaroons have suddenly become quite popular in Japan too.
They’re easy to find at many convenience stores (though that’s not where these
came from).
Even the dishes can make a simple sesame pudding look
stunning.
The cakes are almost always spectacular as well and if you
find yourself at a nice tea shop, you can usually get a good deal on tea with
your cake.
Less often, you can find absolutely stunning drinks. This
one was found at a café with a pretty delicious lunch set. It’s their berry
“juice.” It’s more like an Italian soda with a bunch of fresh berries hanging
out at the bottom.
Japan is also a place to find food-related things to have a
good laugh at. Like this Onigiri (rice ball) hat!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this array of strange and beautiful
foods from Japan! If you’d like to see more of my Japan adventures, my blog is
here.
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