Cakehead: Japanese Eating Inventions

the noodle eaters hair guard

This week's award for the-restaurant-we-would-never-visit-if-it-were-in-the-United States, but-since-it's in-Japan-it's-cool goes to: the Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurant in Tokyo. They claim to be a "labyrith of fantasy dining" plus they offer over 100 cocktail flavors to boot. Maybe all the cocktail option are part of the labyrith they boast of. But what really sold us was the report that the food comes accompanied with little "Eat Me" tags.

[From Cory Doctorow via boingboing.net]

And the same owners who bring you Alice in Wonderland dining also created the Vampire Cafe!

Also from the wonderful world of Japanese culture - and could come in handy should you indulge in the noodle amuse bouche dishes at Alice's Restaurant is the Noodle Eater's Hair Guard. One of many objects that are part of Chindogu.

[from the Nonist via Boingboing.net]

For more on Chindogu read on...

chindogu: the not-so-ancient Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, Chindogu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions, would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever. Thus, Chindogu are sometimes described as ‘unuseless’ - that is, they cannot be regarded as ‘useless’ in an absolute sense, since they do actually solve a problem; however, in practical terms, they cannot positively be called ‘useful’. the following are 12 examples culled from the pages of the book 101 unuseless inventions.