When looking back at Japanese food and cooking in the past decade, the stand out trend is the tremendous influence of social media — Instagram and Twitter in particular — on the way many Japanese people cook and eat.

The visual appeal of food has always been important in Japan, and online outlets have been a great way to spread the appeal of food you cooked. The 2000s were a great time for recipe bloggers, especially makers of highly decorative, complicated and almost entirely visual bento box lunches called charaben or kyaraben.

Photogenic food: Bubble tea is just one example of insutaba-e ('looks good on Instagram') food popular with Japan's 26 million Instagram users. | PIXTA
Photogenic food: Bubble tea is just one example of insuta-bae ('looks good on Instagram') food popular with Japan's 26 million Instagram users. | PIXTA