Japan and Design

September Wagashi, originally uploaded by bananagranola.

Japan gives a high importance to visual look. How you present things
and how things "appear" are very important. This philosophy is very much
applied to food. If you check out the sweet sction in any store its a visual
treat. They are very detailed at times and their finish is very good.
Not only sweets, but lunch boxes at convenience stores are equally
presented beautifully.

I only really understood the degree of how important the appearance of
food is when I was having Zen buddhist lunch at a temple in Kyoto.
I was eating a sweet and saw that it had some small black granulated
substance all over. When I asked what it was, since it appeared to
have no taste of its own, I was informed that it was some herb just to
provide texture to the sweet.

So its not only how the food tastes, how you present the food and
how it looks, but also how it "feels".