On a rainy day in June, the exhibition halls inside Tokyo Big Sight were brightly lit, accentuating the metallic gleam of the high-tech equipment on display at the Japan Food Machinery Manufacturers’ Association expo.
The atmosphere was slightly disorienting, a cross between a county science fair and a car show — complete with young women in brightly colored skimpy costumes who demonstrated the products with rehearsed enthusiasm. I made my way through clusters of black-suited businessmen, past fast-and-furious mechanized slicers, mammoth mixers, and giant defrosters built by companies with masculine-sounding names ending in “x”: Dremax, Mondomix and Radix.
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