Fake sushi making class in Tokyo

by Holly

We signed up for this Airbnb experience in Iriya neighborhood, Taito City, Tokyo. Our host Mika told us Iriya is where fake food in its modern form was invented some decades ago. The class was held in a peaceful, bright studio in a building with other studios; a great venue for a quiet few hours activity making fake sushi.




Someone's knit art was hanging in the foyer:

First we mixed some 2 part resin (by mass) and poured into molds to make some rice pedestals and the pieces of fish.

The resin smelled like polyester, but Mika says the formulation is secret and one must buy the resin from the fake food supply warehouse. There were two types: one was more solid white and the other more translucent. The whiter one was used for rice, while the translucent one was used for tuna. These resins set within minutes and were ready to handle shortly after.

Molds were made by the host Mika by pouring two part silicone rubber around real food.

Minced tuna was made from mixing some fillers and color into clear silicone, then layering a darker pink and lighter pink alternating.

The paints and glazes for decorating did a wonderful job.

The sushi we made here turned out amazing.

With this experience under our belts, we turned a critical eye to the samples on display in shop windows. In many cases ours looked much better!

Since we were in the neighborhood, Buster and I went to have a look at Tokyo Skytree before heading back to our apartment. We've seen a lot of towers in Asia lately, so we are hard to impress in this area. But Skytree really is pretty cool. The design is so interesting and the scale is mind boggling. We got off at an earlier station and walked along the river to approach it, giving us some nice vistas to admire the structure. It really is extremely tall.

It was not crowded at all on a weekday afternoon, but the place was well managed and set up to expedite high volumes of people up to the viewing decks and back down in comfort. It was pretty hazy that day so we could not see terribly far, but it was still neat to look down on the surrounding parts of Tokyo from such a vantage point.