Food with a face

This is not a guilt trip to promote vegetarianism. The faces on these food items are fake. Quail egg heads with nori (seaweed wrapper) hair and black sesame eyes were designed to evoke your average pair of Nihon-jin. Attention to detail is a hallmark of Japanese cuisine. While the upper echelon of Japan's culinary elite is considerably more cutting edge than cute, this grocery store display perfectly showcases the playful side of the country's cooking tradition. The platter touts the virtues of tofu pouches (the same kind used to make the sweetly stuffed inarizushi) as vehicles for various tasty fillings, from pickled daikon to ground pork.