Restaurant Displays

One of the continually intriguing things in Japan are the restaurant displays. There seems to be an active market for plastic recreations of a restaurants' regular meals. It is common to see a display window with amazingly life-like dishes to choose from. This is super handy for tourists - and the food often looks very close to the display. I haven't run into much false advertising.

As an example, I recently took this picture at a frozen yogurt cafe. After oggling the selection I planned to get a coffee float. When I saw the menu, though, I noticed that there was a black sesame frozen yogurt. Never one to pass up black sesame, I gave it a go. You might be able to see the black sesame parfait in the display window. Its the one with the rather large gray growth coming out the side. Based on looks alone, I probably would have passed this one by. It turned out to be delicious, though. I was also impressed to find that the frozen yogurt actually tasted like yogurt! Not just "not-icecream." An all around win.