Have you ever wondered why American restaurants don't have those adorable Japanese food displays of meals that look ridiculously realistic? As it turns out, it may be for a multitude of cultural and economical reasons.

In this recently released video by Great Big Story, we get an intimate tour into the factory that makes over half of the food craft displays found in Japan.

I always assumed that these had to be made by machine, but apparently fake food products made by machines aren't likely to pass as the real deal, so these factories hire highly proficient Japanese artists with years of training (one man in this video has worked at this factory for 36 years!). Another thing I never realized was the high value of these pieces, which becomes much more clear after a look into the painstaking process of making them—individual pieces sometimes take up to 3 hours or more and can cost as much as $1000 a pop.

In the spirit of Friday, I've decided to attach a few more detailed looks into the faux food manufacturing process. Like this plastic magically being formed into lettuce: 

Also, an artfully detailed tour of one of the factories that's actually from Wim Wenders' 1985 documentary Tokyo-Ga: