DURING THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, JAPAN UNDERWENT A GREAT TRANSFORMATION IN INCORPORATING CERTAIN KEY ELEMENTS OF WESTERN CULTURE INTO ITS OWN RICH, TRADITIONAL CULTURE. IN RECENT YEARS, THE WEST IS EXPERIENCING AN INVERSE TREND TO INCORPORATE JAPANESE INFLUENCES INTO OUR OWN LIFESTYLES. GIRLS AND BOYS VISUALLY FEED ON JAPANESE COMICS AND CARTOONS WHILE ADULTS, IN ADDITION TO TECHNOLOGY CONSUMPTION, INCLUDE JAPANESE CUISINE IN THEIR DIET. JAPANESE RESTAURANTS WERE SCARCELY MORE THAN A CURIOSITY IN BARCELONA FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: TODAY THEY HAVE BECOME A PART OF THE CITY’S EVERYDAY GASTRONOMIC LANDSCAPE.

Made in Japan
Baited by the unusual sophistication of eating raw fish, we have ended up including Japanese cuisine in our culinary culture. There is practically no cooking course in the city that does not dedicate some of its classes to preparing sushi. This normalised penetration has given rise to a new kind of Japanese restaurant which is a lot more functional and modern. This is the case of Kin Sushi Bar. Rather than a conventional restaurant, Kin Sushi Bar has a fast-food approach in which patrons do not object to sharing a communal table. Victoria Garriga and Antoni Foraster came out with a noteworthy minimalist interpretation of Japanese aesthetics. These young interior designers chose their decorative elements sparsely: photographs of Sumo wrestlers, for example, which although a seeming cliché directly express the culture to which the restaurant refers. Another minimalist aspect at work here has a functional, as well as aesthetic quality: on one of the walls the ingredients of the day’s special are displayed using computer graphics. A proper casual atmosphere would not be complete without a bar where the specialities of the house can be sampled. The concept behind this bar is to illustrate an alternative to what is currently referred to as “fast food restaurants”. In this case, stress is placed on attention to detail, with the idea that not having much time does not justify the poor quality that usually characterises these restaurants.