I saw this on an airplane once, and I just saw it many times in the cafe at the Louvre this past weekend. Paris was full of Asian tourists traveling for the Lunar New Year holiday break (I heard Japanese, Korean and Mandarin, at least). It only seemed to be the Japanese tourists who were taking food pictures. Do Japanese tourists feel the need to document every aspect of their trips? Do they take photos of the bathroonm in the hotel, for example? I’m hoping some of the Japanophiles on the board can shed some light on this seemingly bizarre practice.
I’ve been known to take pictures of the bathroom when it is suitably hilarious. Also, I took a picture of the menu in Maine that boasted “lobster-stuffed lobster”.
I’ve taken pictures of food if it was unusual or particularly pretty. One of my favorites was a picture of “Fries with the Works” on PEI.
I don’t really see how taking pictures of their food is all that strange. The food they encounter abroad is going to be very different from what they get in Japan, and experiencing new and interesting food is certainly a highlight of travel for most people I know.
With the rise of digital cameras, why not?
I have to ask, why do you think it’s bizarre? Food is an important part of culture, just like architecture, art, scenery and all the other things tourists take photos of. I don’t think it’s just the Japanese who consider local cuisine to be an important part of their trip.
And yes, I am Japanese, but I’ve sat through many conference “reports” from American colleagues, and more often than not, photos of food come up.
Agreed that it’s not really that unusual and it’s not limited to the japanese. I do it sometimes, and lots of my friends do it (locally, even) and put the pictures up on their blogs to tell their friends about the meal that they just had at the hot new restaurant in town. It’s a (wanna-be) foodie thing, I guess. If that’s not your thing, you might find it to be pretentious wankery.
So it might be that japanese tourists do it more often than other groups that you notice because these tourists are cosmopolitan people coming from a culture that especially values interesting and aesthetically pleasing food.
Okay. The young lady next to me on the plane neatly arranged her sandwich, piece of fruit, candy bar and drink on the tray, then took a still-life photo of it. The folks in the Louvre were taking careful photos of their plates – not photos of their friends eating, laughing, etc., just photos of the individual plates with food, and not particularly interesting food.
Why do I find it bizarre? While I adore food, and eating is one of my greatest pleasures in life, I have never felt the desire to take a photo of my meal before eating it. Nor have I ever seen anyone other than Japanese tourists, anywhere I’ve been in the world, take photos of their meals before consuming them. I have seen some pretty amazing food presentations – dumplings in astonishing shapes in X’ian, culinary works of art in Paris, Brussels, and various places in the US, and even a steaming bowl of stewed porcupine in Dushanbe. Never did I, or anyone I was with, whip out the camera and take photos of just the food.
Maybe I’m off the beam and it isn’t bizarre. I guess I should qualify it by saying that my family, friends, and I find it bizarre. Let me add that I’ve been to Japan and that I know a good deal about Japanese culture.
In discussing this with friends and family, the only conclusion we could reach is that it is customary in Japan to do this when one travels. That prompted a discussion of what else one is expected to document photographically if one is Japanese and traveling.
I dunno, it seems to me that food presentation is more important to the Japanese. The restaurants have those exquisitely crafted rubber reporduction sof meals available with in and I’ve noticed in manga that the food is always lovingly and precisely illustrated.
If I had to guess t has something to do with the look of the food and layout. When I researched Japan (culture reports for Social Studies classes etcetera) I never got to go too in depth on that aspect, but from what I understand packaging, shape etc is pretty important. Here it seems pretentious to not buy something otherwise good ebcause the “packaging looks wonky” or “it’s not teh right shape” barring really bizzare or awkward things, but from what i understand from a few friends that have lived/exchanged there (I inadvertantly always manage to be with the foreign crowd, doesn’t matter if its from England, Germany, Norway, Japan etc but it always happens somehow) that, at least many of them say over there it can actually be a major piece of decision making.
So it could be them showing the “layout” of the food. Though, I’m totally going off only the fact that you’re saying its mostly Japanese people, which seems odd because I don’t really find it odd at all as I’ve known plenty of people that took pictures of their food for no reason other than they can or “omg its so perfect looking… must… preserve… forever!”
I think there must be something in Japanese culture that makes detailed trip documenation important. For example, on several ocasions I have seen Japanese tourists in a museum taking pictures of every single display, but not really “looking” at the display. Like they walk up to a case, click, move down one case click…
This is not how most museum visitors experience a museum.
Go hang out on some foodie websites. There’s tons of people who live to go to good restaurants and take pics of their food so they can post it along with their review.
After the Japanese people at the table next to ours took photos of their food, I specifically took note of what was going on in the cafe. I saw many Asian people taking photos of their food. I saw no non-Asian people taking pictures of their food. I lived in Korea for five years, and I can say that none of my Korean friends took pictures of their food in my presence, either in Korea or when they were visiting me in the US. Nor did I ever see this in restaurants in Korea. Some of the folks in the cafe might not have been Japanese, as I didn’t hear all of them speaking, but based on what they were wearing and their mannerisms and how they were behaving, I was pretty sure it was just the Japanese folks who were doing the food photography.
I understand about presentation. Even a simple pento or doshirak can be a work of art, and I won’t get in to more elaborate Asian presentations or the importance of appearance and harmony in much of Asian cooking. I could understand if they were photographing nicely-plated food. They were taking pictures of pieces of pizza, salads, and other pretty mundane stuff. Maybe they wanted to show their friends back home how lousy the presentation is in western cooking.
Granted I hadn’t considered the blogging aspects. The idea that anyone would want to look at pictures of my meal and read that I had dinner at x with friends p,q, and r and we talked about z is so foreign to me that it never crossed my mind that someone else would want photos for a blog.
Here’s my photo set of Japanese food, taken during a recent trip: Sushi Whore | Flickr
While there are some photos of people eating, the photo set is mostly about the food.
And now I’m hungry. :smack:
I would guess it’s part of the Japanese concern with aesthetics, but I’m really not sure. I do notice a disproportionate amount of Japanese (and other Asian ethnicities) taking pictures of food / taking huge amounts of travel photos.
Japan hasn’t had a Lunar New Year since 1873.
Good Lord. I lived half my life in Korea and my friends wouldn’t let me touch my food until they took pictures of it. I don’t know when you were in Korea or what age group you were hanging out with, but taking pics of your food is pretty common over there.
I think East Asians in general (the younger ones, mid-20s and under) are just obsessed with taking pictures. One of my other friends was telling me how he saw some Chinese tourists taking a picture of themselves getting on a Greyhound bus, and how he didn’t understand why anyone would want to remember boarding a Greyhound bus, much less take a picture of it. They just like taking pictures of everything. I was brought up in that culture and I still couldn’t tell you why, only that it is so.
Really? I’m a “boring old” white male 20 year old American and I do this sometimes. My recent round the world backpacking trip has lots of pictures of food, such as weird beers I’ve had, particularly interesting pastries, or in one case, having a beer and a “royale with cheese” at a McDonalds–Pulp Fiction style.
Things looking pretty is HUGE in Japanese and Korean culture. Cellphones are a good example - there’s a big market for cellphone doodabs and decorations over there, whereas in the US people don’t seem to really care much for stuff like that.
The OP is asking about a broader observance of a culture. I’d be surprised if they were all “foodies who write reviews” that happened to be tourists from Japan.
I think there may simply be more of a “shutter-bug” culture. I don’t think it’s photographing food as much as photographing everything, including the presentation of food, enjoying the ability to record and share the experience. And why not? Detailed photos mean that family memers can vicariously share in their adventures.
Although I’m somehwhat baffled when I see what T-SQUARE mentioned. When I was at the Louvre, there were tourists rushing to pose in front of as many different, famous works of art as they could, but they didn’t really stop to appreciate them much or really even look at them beyond framing a snapshot. But that’s not unique to Japanese culture, Umberto Eco’s book Travels in Hyper-Reality covers a whole gamut of that kind of approach to experiencing the world.
I would say aesthetics, and the fact that a lot of the food they’re being served when abroad probably isn’t available back home. People take pictures of novel things, their friends will always be with them but this funny looking food isn’t going to be around here forever! 
I did the same when I was in Japan. There were a lot of interesting foods that I knew would be hard to describe to my family and friends back home, so most of the time it was just easier to snap a picture and show it to them.