Mini Me

Tired of that old purikura? Those eye-widening pictures that make you look like you are perpetually 12 with cute little designs all over it or those stickers and giving yourself cat faces and ears just not cutting it?

Well thank god Japan is ahead of its game in technology.
Recently, I watched a television show about how they could make remarkably accurate replicas of their fake food. In the show, they used a 3D imager to take a massive print of a cantaloupe melon. They then used the same software to somehow make an exact replica of it in plastics. The show was actually a pretty remarkable one where two people were competing to make the most accurate melons as possible in order to fool a professional judge when compared against 8 other melons that were real. The judge was able to narrow it down to the last 3 and then gave up. In any case, it is this kind of technology, the 3D imaging and replicating of the artifact, that lead to this very innovation to the purikura market.
Now, you can have your very own you...as an action figure!!! Sweet right!? OK well it is more of a figurine, but it is still pretty sweet. You see, you go in for a nice 3D picture and then they will shrink the image into a size of your choice for your very own you-figurine. Only, you can't make a model in a day. The whole process takes about a month, so you have to stay in that position for an incredibly long time and they have to hook feeding tubes up and stuff.

....Right, so it is not that long. It is a long enough time (15 minutes) that they are concerned about your ability to hold a pose still enough for the imaging software to be able to accurately capture it. As for the mini model, now that will take some time. That process should be somewhere around a month give or take some change. And then of course they will mail you the final model.

Still the whole thing is pretty awesome. A total advance to the world of self-righteous egoists and others, who just want their picture taken. Imagine in a few years being able to go to a booth and get this whole process done in half an hour and out comes in the little drop box, a mini you. Or imagine with their buy in bulk option, a politician handing out mini action figures of himself for his campaign. Or a movie campaign for Marvel or something like Kickass, handing out their super heroes in Happy Meals and such....ok so they have those, but not in this detail (eye wrinkles! they can capture your eye wrinkles!....who wants to see oneself portrayed with eye wrinkles...?)...and not with YOU in the costume. Now that would make it much cooler.

source:
http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/15/3-d-photo-booth-makes-a-miniature-you/?hpt=hp_c3

Can I take your order?

One of the things I first loved about Japan, was their plastic food.

Outside of a great many restaurants you will find their menu. In food format. In Japan there is a whole industry on the construction and life-likeness of plastic food. The food of course displays what the menu is for the restaurant and for someone who spoke and read exactly no Japanese save for sumimasen, these visual menus were the perfect way to see what a restaurant had. You might find a good amount of the menus of places are written in stylized kanji and will need someone to order for you. It seems that, save for very well populated and well positioned restaurants, a good amount of menus have a sincere absence of visual aid to help you decide what you would like to order. Making these little outdoor look-alikes a nice blessing.
Plastic food seems to last forever. Honestly one restaurant where I live I swear probably installed their display in the 70's and hasn't opened it since. Granted there are newer and better models of the same thing that are now in production. Models that look nearly real. Of course models still need a good dusting now and again to maintain their life-like qualities or the food will sincerely begin to look a bit drab.
Occasionally there will be real models of the food outside. If there is a special that day or a slight change in the menu or what not. But be advised not to eat it. I am sure they will look at you very strangely for that indeed. Also it will probably be cold.

Can't speak Japanese? Not a problem. When I first visited Japan and went to restaurants alone, I would take a picture on my phone of whatever I desired to eat and show the waiter/waitress/or cook. And oh they loved it. I was such a funny little gaijin to them.