8D Avia Japan Trip: Japanese Food Replica Making in Gifu
Good morning from Gifu. After our very packed first day getting through Osaka, Kyoto and ending the day with a stayover at Gifu, we were ready to embark on the second day of our spring Japan tour with Avia tour. Day 2 starts at Gifu with a unique activity which can only be done in Japan. Uhm, nope, I know that river in the old town of Gifu is so beautiful and we do feel like having a morning walk immediately around the old town but we have thing that we need to do here.
The activity that we need to do will be done in this one traditional store in Gifu. Oh I wonder if this involves eating snack, which is definitely what I love to do in Japan. I think I have space in my stomach for Japanese snack for sure.
The store is actually selling food replica. Do you notice that most restaurants in Japan display their menu in a wax replica which really looks similar to the real dish (sometimes even better). This is the store where you can buy keychains or fridge magnet in the form of food such as ice cream, dango (i.e. traditional Japanese cake), tempura, sushi, and even a can of spilled coffee or beer. That would be a very fun and harmless prank to pull at one of your friend’s house.
The classroom for the course is situated at the back of the store. The store itself is pretty huge and it seems to be very popular with the tourist because our tour guide emphasize that we have to reach this place by certain timing. I initially thought we will be exposed to intricate and complicated design of food replica but turns out I was worry for nothing.
Oh, are we making fake fruit tarts? Looks at how real the fruit pieces look like. I suddenly imagining myself having a real sweet and fruity tart for after-breakfast-dessert. Hahaha. Since there are 16 of us, we were split into 2 groups but the teacher spoke in Japanese and hence, our tour guide need to explain to us the steps required to make our food replica. Since it involves hot wax, please exercise caution. After a demo has been done, we will have our chance one by one to make our own version of...
...prawn tempura and cabbage. For the tempura, each of us was given the prawn so we just need to wrap the yellow which eventually turn into something which resembles batter. The cabbage is basically made by spreading out the green color wax like crepe and then shape it into a ball by squeezing it slowly. I wish they can be smaller because it’s kinda difficult for me to display them when they look this big. I mean, bigger make it kinda less cuter, right? Hahaha.
After the whole hands-on experience is done, the store staff will hand you a discount coupon yeay! We took our time to check out what we wanted to buy and my mum ended up with 4 fridge magnets in different kind of food. Our fridge door is really full of magnet now. Once you are done shopping, take your time to enjoy the scenery of the surrounding area a few steps outside the store. I really love the view of the river in the old town in Japan. It’s so clean and serene not like the river in the big cities I suppose.
The other side of the river has some flowers which I don’t think are sakura but nonetheless, they look pretty. Brown enjoys the view and sunlight of a clear spring day too.
By the way, where is Gifu? Gifu is actually located within 2 hours of bus ride from Kyoto. Train ride from Kyoto to Gifu takes longer around 4 hours unless you want to take shinkansen to Nagoya instead and then taking bus to Gifu. I read in Tripadvisor that it is cheaper to take an overnight bus from Kyoto to Gifu if you want to save time.