Breakfast

Kaiseki (懐石)  or kaiseki ryōri (懐石料理)  is a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner. The term also refers to the collection of skills and techniques that allow the preparation of such meals, and are analogous to Western haute cuisine.

There are basically two kinds of traditional Japanese meal styles called kaiseki or kaiseki ryōri. The first, where kaiseki is written as 会席 (and kaiseki ryōri, 会席料理), referring to the fancy meal served at banquets. The other is written 懐石 or 懐石料理, referring to the simple meal that the host of a chanoyu gathering serves to the guests, and which is also known as cha-kaiseki (茶懐石).

Fake food samples appear prevalently in the windows and display cases of food-serving establishments throughout Japan. They are usually made out of plastic. The plastic models are mostly handmade and carefully sculpted to look like the actual dishes. The models are custom-tailored to restaurants  and even common items such as ramen will be modified to match each establishment's food. During the molding process, the fake ingredients are often chopped up and combined in a manner similar to actual cooking.

The craftsmanship has been raised to an art form and plastic food has been exhibited at places such as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Regular competitions are held in making fake food dishes out of plastic and other materials.

The plastic food manufacturers fiercely guard their trade secrets as business is lucrative; the plastic food industry in Japan, by conservative estimates, has revenues of billions of yen per year. A single restaurant may order a complete menu of plastic items costing over a million yen.

In recent years, Japanese plastic food manufacturers have been targeting markets overseas, such as China.

Furikake is a dry Japanese condiment meant to be sprinkled on top of rice. It typically consists of a mixture of dried and ground fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and monosodium glutamate. Other flavorful ingredients such as katsuobushi (sometimes indicated on the package as bonito), salmon, shiso, egg, and vegetables are often added to the mix.