Actually These Are Cakes – Shinjuku Station Cake Shop
Passing through Shinjuku station the other day I saw this cake shop, Maplies Cake, where they had some interesting cakes on sale, made up to look almost exactly like bowls of ramen, plates of gyoza and even some tenshinhan. I am lucky to even have noticed the sign!「実はこれ、ケーキです。」I did not get any close ups of the real things as I felt it would have been a little bit rude to shoot and run! Still if you are interested, go check them out for yourself. You can just go to the little underground square between Marunouchi line, Toei Oedo line and the JR lines. Let us know how they taste!
Tokyobling's Blog 
I’m not sure I’d actually want to eat any of these!
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Haha… I can count on one hand the number of times I have said no to cake! (^-^;)
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While it usually features cakes that are so poorly decorated that they are hilarious, the Cake Wrecks blog (http://cakewrecks.squarespace.com/) also features cakes that are beautiful and/or cunningly made. These would certainly qualify as cunning.
I would have loved a closer look!
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Ah yes, that is one famous blog! (^-^) If I ever find an excuse to buy one I will make sure to take some better photos!
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That would be really awesome to punk someone with cake that looks like “real” food! It reminds me of the God of Cake: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/10/god-of-cake.html
Because clearly, cake *is* the only thing that matters in life 🙂 It’s hard to tell how much these cost, but if it’s not much more than a regular cake, someone has to try it.
Aaand I saw Halloween cakes in the second pic? I didn’t realize Tokyo celebrates the occasion.
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Haha… that is one sweet comic! (^-^;) There is Halloween celebrations all over Japan, not a tradition (yet…), still merely a commercial import from shopkeepers that figure we needed something to fill up our months with even more consumption before christmas (which still isn’t a very big thing here in Japan).
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Interesting that I guess in a city it’s more commericalized, although I’m not sure how. Here it’s all about the harvest season, so pumpkins galore. I just hosted a BYOP carving shindig and for a few bucks, it’s great to get the creative juices flowing. Plus the leftovers went to roasting pumpkin seeds and (really bad attempts at) making pies. It feels more down-to-earth than Christmas. (Then again, no time for costume parties, so maybe that’s where the money goes)
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I think they typically symbolizing how Japan lost the edge in the world market.
For domesticated Japanese, “looks like Ramen but in fact it was a Cake” gives twist and joke.
But for the people, out side world who is not living next to a Ramen, it doesn’t make any sense.
This shop just pushed a linear logic, by reversing old existing product. Nothing new.
This Galapagos syndrome is still with them = even worse, they are not aware of it !
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I’m not really sure what Yoshizen said but the idea is neat in concept just not sure I’d try them. But then again for the novelty of it I may.
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I’m a complete sucker for novelty, so I know what you mean (^-^;)
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Yoshizen, I think you are over-interpreting it. It is just a few cakes in a small station underground cake shop! Their market is budget consumers, since most of the cakes are 105 yen. (^-^;)
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