The Brief

At the 49-year-old Little Tokyo restaurant Kouraku, potential diners can peruse a glass case lined with fake foods to preview what’s on the menu.

The display of shokuhin sampuru, or “sample foods,” spans half the restaurant’s East 2nd Street storefront and features life-size replicas of its most popular dishes.

A viscous brown gravy ladled atop the best-selling tenshin chahan ankake (shrimp omelette with pork fried rice) pools into a glossy moat, while the generously portioned mabo tofu includes heaps of delicate tofu cubes suspended from a serving spoon. The three-dimensional models look good enough to eat — and that’s exactly the point.

The artistic precision that goes into each replica.

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Jérémie Souteyrat

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Courtesy Japan House

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New exhibit

The tradition of shokuhin sampuru has been delighting Japanese diners and diasporic communities for over a century, and is the subject of a new exhibit at Japan House Los Angeles called “Looks Delicious!”

The exhibition, which is free to attend until Jan. 25, 2026, is the first of its kind to explore Japan’s food replica culture in the U.S., and was previously on display at Japan House London.

Eat with your eyes

Located within the Ovation Hollywood complex, Japan House Los Angeles’ bi-level campus includes an event space, gallery, library, gift shop and Michelin-starred kaiseki restaurant, Uka.

Looks Delicious! takes over the gallery, with seven distinct areas displaying different elements of shokuhin sampuru culture, from its origins, to its manufacturing and its adoption in restaurants and beyond.

A pile of juicy spaghetti covered with tomato sauce. The catch? It's all fake.

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Cathy Chaplin

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LAist

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Shokuhin sampuru first appeared in 1923 at one of Japan’s oldest department stores, Shirokiya, as a way to introduce Japanese diners to Western-style dishes (yōshoku) available in its dining hall.

Painted wax models cast from agar jelly molds enticed an unfamiliar audience to try dishes like spaghetti and hamburgers. The success of Shirokiya’s food replicas led to its widespread usage by other department stores and eventually by restaurants across Japan.

Today, well-made and prominently displayed food replicas continue to play an important role in bridging cultural and language barriers for international tourists visiting the country.

Looks Delicious! exhibition at Japan House London in 2024.

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Jeremie Souteyrat

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Courtesy Japan House

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From old-school wax to modern plastic

While wax food models were sufficient during shokuhin sampuru's earliest iterations, their limited range of textures and colors, as well as their sensitivity to heat and light, were improved upon with the introduction of silicon molds and synthetic resins in the 1970s.

Sturdier materials, coupled with skilled artisans dedicated to hand-painting foods in painstaking detail, transformed what was originally considered practical marketing tools into genuine works of hyper-realistic art.

Beyond its functional purpose, shokuhin sampuru underscores the importance of hospitality and manufacturing within Japanese culture.

“Of course, it had a business commercial intention, but it was part of the spirit to provide hospitality, to make people feel comfortable,” said Yuko Kaifu, president of Japan House Los Angeles, “and also attention to detail; we call it monozukuri.”

Japan’s deeply rooted dedication and pride to craftsmanship, continuous improvement, and innovation are at the heart of shokuhin sampuru production.

Even with the proliferation of food photos online and on social media today, many restaurants in Japan continue to commission shokuhin sampuru, providing photographs and frozen versions of dishes to manufacturers to ensure accuracy of the replicas.

It can cost up to $10,000 to render an entire menu; however, more affordably priced generic food replicas are also available to restaurants for purchase.

On the culinary map

The centerpiece of the exhibit is a bounteous collection of specially commissioned food replicas from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures.

The northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido is represented by ohaw soup, a dish of game or fish simmered with seasonal wild mountain vegetables, traditionally made by the Ainu indigenous people. The fish filets’ shiny skin and delicate scales look lifelike under the gallery’s overhead lights.

In Aichi Prefecture, a replica of ogura toast consists of a plush slice of shoku-pan (Japanese white bread) daintily topped with sweet red bean paste and a thick pat of butter. Even simple mandarin oranges from Ehime Prefecture appear pristine, their skins supple and flesh appealingly juicy.

The exhibit is organized in collaboration with the Iwasaki, a group of three companies founded in 1932 by Iwasaki Takizō that produces the bulk of Japan’s food replicas (approximately 70 percent of market share). The commissioned food replicas for the exhibit were made by Iwasaki.

Rounding out Looks Delicious! are areas dedicated to celebrating Japanese confections (wagashi) and Edo-period snacks; an interactive build-your-own bento activity using an assortment of replica ingredients; and examples of shokuhin sampuru uses beyond restaurant marketing, including nutritional education.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cannot impose dramatically different conditions for homelessness programs for now, according to an oral ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island.

McElroy granted a preliminary injunction to a group of states, cities and nonprofits who said a last minute overhaul of how to spend $4 billion on homelessness programs was unlawful. She also agreed with their argument that it likely would push many people back onto the streets in the middle of winter, causing irreparable harm.

"Continuity of housing and stability for vulnerable populations is clearly in the public interest," said McElroy, ordering HUD to maintain its previous funding formula.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement the order "means that more than 170,000 people – families, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities — have respite from the government's assault."

HUD has sought to dramatically slash funding for permanent housing and encourage more transitional housing that mandates work and treatment for addiction or mental illness. The overhaul — announced last month — also would allow the agency to deny money to local groups that don't comply with the Trump administration's agenda on things like DEI, the restriction of transgender rights and immigration enforcement.

"HUD will continue working to provide homelessness assistance funding to grantees nationwide," said HUD spokeswoman Kasey Lovett in a statement to NPR. "The Department remains committed to program reforms intended to assist our nation's most vulnerable citizens and will continue to do so in accordance with the law."

'Chaos seems to be the point'

McElroy expressed frustration with a series of HUD actions in recent weeks. Just hours before a Dec. 8 hearing, the agency withdrew its new funding notice, saying it would make changes to address critics' concerns. But on Friday, HUD's attorney said the new version would not be ready until the end of the day.

"The timing seems to be strategic," McElroy said, asserting there was no reason the document could not have been ready before the hearing. "The constant churn and chaos seems to be the point."

In defending the agency, attorney John Bailey said HUD was simply trying to change its policies to reflect President Donald Trump's executive orders, which he called "legal directives." The judge interjected repeatedly to explain that he was conflating things, noting Congress — not the president — makes laws.

'It's kind of shocking'

HUD's changes were announced in November with little notice and only weeks before local homeless service providers must apply for new funding.

"Our agencies are just scrambling right now to try to respond," said Pam Johnson with Minnesota Community Action Partnership, whose members provide housing and other services for homeless people. "It also just reverses 40 years of bipartisan work on proven solutions to homelessness. So it's really, it's kind of shocking."

For decades, U.S. policy favored permanent housing with optional treatment for addiction or mental illness Years of research has found the strategy is effective at keeping people off the streets.

But many conservatives argue it's failed to stop record rates of homelessness.

"What is the root cause of homelessness? Mental illness, drug addiction, drug abuse," HUD Secretary Scottt Turner said recently on Fox Business Network. "During the Biden administration, it was just warehousing. It was a homeless industrial complex."

Turner and others who support the changes say the goal is to push people towards self-sufficiency.

But local advocates say mental health and substance abuse are not the main factors driving homelessness.

"It's poverty. Poverty, low income and significant lack of affordable housing," says Julie Embree, who heads the Toledo Lucas County Homelessness Board in Ohio.

Many in permanent housing have disabilities that make it hard to work full time, she said. Embree agrees with Trump administration goals like efficiency and saving money, but says pushing people back into homelessness, where they're more likely to land in jail, the courts or a hospital, is not cost-effective.

"One emergency room visit is just as expensive as a month of sustaining this [permanent housing] program," she said.

In Los Angeles, Stephanie Klasky-Gamer with LA Family Housing said there is a need for more transitional housing, but not at the expense of long-term housing. And the idea that programs could simply switch from one to the other is not only unrealistic, it's illegal.

"You cannot take a building that has a 75-year deed restriction and just — ding! — call it interim housing," she said.

Those challenging HUD say providers who own such properties – or states who've invested millions of dollars in permanent housing projects — face "significant financial jeopardy" if their funding is not renewed.

In addition to the legal challenges, members of Congress from both parties have questioned HUD's sudden shift on homelessness. Advocates have lobbied lawmakers to step in and, at the least, push for more time to prepare for such a massive overhaul.

President Donald Trump said the administration has reached agreements with nine more drugmakers to bring their U.S. drug prices more in line with what other wealthy countries pay.

Fourteen companies in total have now reached what the administration calls most-favored-nation pricing deals. The companies that took part in Friday's announcement were: Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi.

They agreed to charge the U.S. government no more for new drugs than the prices paid by other well-off countries. The agreements will allow state Medicaid programs to access lower prices from the nine companies. In a statement, the White House said the change will result "in billions of dollars in savings."

The drugmakers also agreed to invest at least $150 billion in manufacturing operations in the U.S. The president is seeking to increase domestic production of pharmaceuticals.

In addition, the companies agreed to make some of their most popular drugs available at lower prices to consumers who pay out of pocket through a government website called TrumpRx.com. The TrumpRx website is expected to launch in early 2026, and would take consumers to pharmaceutical companies' direct-to-consumer websites to fulfill orders.

For example, Merck will reduce the price of Januvia, a medication for Type 2 diabetes, from $330 to $100 for patients purchasing directly through TrumpRx, the White House said. Amgen will reduce the price of Repatha, a cholesterol-lowering drug, from $573 to $239 when purchased through TrumpRx.

In exchange for these concessions, the companies will be exempt from possible administration tariffs for three years.

The extent of savings for consumers under the agreements is unclear. Medicaid and its beneficiaries already pay some of the lowest prices for drugs. And people with health insurance could spend less on copays for their medicines than paying cash for them through the drugmakers.

Separately, Trump said during the press event that he would like to get health insurers to lower their prices, too.

"I'm going to call a meeting of the insurance companies," he said. "I'm going to see if they [will] get their price down, to put it very bluntly."

America's new top health diplomat is Bethany Kozma.

The job she took on this week — leading the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Global Affairs — does not have a high profile. And Kozma herself is not a familiar name in the world of public health.

But it is a position with power — and Kozma has a record of public statements and activism on health issues, equating abortion with "murder" and campaigning against gender-affirming care.

The office sometimes is referred to as the "diplomatic voice" of HHS. As director, Kozma will have considerable influence over how the U.S. shapes health policy in other countries in the wake of the Trump administration's foreign aid cuts and withdrawal from the World Health Organization.

Kozma declined to be interviewed for this story. She doesn't appear to have a background in global health based on publicly available information online. The HHS website offers few details about her professional profile. In response to questions about her qualifications and vision for the role, HHS responded with this statement.

"The Office of Global Affairs (OGA) advances the Trump administration's agenda and priorities by bringing common sense, transparency and gold-standard science to global partners. Under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, OGA is committed to strengthening the United States' position as the global gold-standard for public health and ensuring Americans are protected at home and abroad."

Who is Bethany Kozma?

Kozma began her career in public service during the George W. Bush administration, working at the White House Homeland Security Council. During the Obama years, she re-entered public life as an activist.

In a 2016 commentary for The Daily Signal, a conservative news website founded by the Heritage Foundation, she argued against the Obama administration's guidance that public schools should allow children to use the bathroom that comports with their identity.

"This radical agenda of subjective 'gender fluidity' and unrestricted shower and bathroom access actually endangers all," she stated, noting that "predators" could abuse the policy.

In 2017, she joined the Trump administration as senior adviser for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in the United States Agency for International Development, eventually being promoted to deputy chief of staff. In videos obtained and released by ProPublica, Kozma recalls calling the U.S. a "pro-life" country in a closed-door U.N. meeting about women's rights in 2018, when access to abortion still was protected nationally by Roe v. Wade.

In August 2020, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and four other Democratic senators issued a letter labeling Kozma and several other political appointees at USAID as "prejudiced" and called for them to be removed from their posts. Kozma has "spoken extensively and derisively of trans people and trans issues," the senators wrote.

During the Biden administration, she also was involved in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's "blueprint" for a new Republican administration. She played a prominent role in Project 2025 training videos, obtained and published by ProPublica.

In one nearly 50-minute training video focused on left-wing language, she called for a Republican administration to "eradicate 'climate change' references from absolutely everywhere," and said that concerns over climate change are efforts at "population control." She also called gender-affirming care "absolutely infuriating" and said "the idea that gender is fluid is evil." Overall, she argued that changing language around these policies should be a priority for political appointees.

Kozma joined the second Trump administration as a chief adviser at the HHS Office of Global Affairs. In September, she spoke at a U.N. event commemorating the 30th anniversary of the declaration that denying women's rights is a human rights violation.

"While many may celebrate so-called successes gained for women over the last 30 years, one must ask what defines true success for women?" she began, adding that "biological reality is rooted in scientific truth and is confirmed by the universal truths that we are endowed by our creator who made us 'male and female.'"

Those views can be divisive but have garnered some support for Kozma's promotion.

"Bethany is an excellent pick for global affairs at HHS," says Roger Servino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation. "She was an early champion of protecting children from gender ideology back when the medical establishment was able to silence voices of reason and dissent and she is perfectly placed to help push back on global health bodies trying to impose left wing pseudoscience on the American people and the world."

What will her goals be at the Office of Global Affairs?

Kozma is taking over as director of the HHS Office of Global Affairs at a time of drastic change for global health.

In previous administrations, a main focus of the office was dealing with the World Health Organization. Typically, the director, who usually has a background in public health, is involved in negotiations on sharing data for pathogen surveillance or developing vaccine policy, for example.

After President Trump withdrew the U.S. from WHO, the administration has started a new strategy: striking deals with individual countries to give health aid in exchange for their meeting certain policy prescriptions. Kozma has been involved in some of those negotiations, but the details aren't quite finalized.

Some reproductive rights advocates believe Kozma will use her new position to insert anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ policies into these agreements.

"[Kozma] is vehemently anti-trans, anti-LGBTQI+, anti-abortion," says Keifer Buckingham, managing director at the Council on Global Equality, a coalition of advocacy organizations that focuses on LGBTQ issues. "For those of us who want to ensure that the provision of U.S. foreign assistance and health doesn't discriminate against people based on who they are, [Kozma's appointment] raises a lot of red flags."

One particular worry is about the Helms Amendment, a U.S. policy that prohibits foreign aid being used to fund abortion services.

"There's been speculation that there's an intention by the U.S. government to expand the Helms Amendment beyond abortion to include LGBTQ's as well," says Musoba Kitui, director of Ipas Africa Alliance, a non-profit that works to provide access to abortion and contraception. He's concerned that health groups that serve those populations could lose funding. That speculation is backed up by reporting from The Daily Signal that the administration is planning to prohibit U.S. aid funding for "gender ideology and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives."

Given LGBTQ people are often at higher risk for diseases like HIV, such policies could make these communities even more vulnerable, says Kitui.

"We could see more marginalization, inequality, spikes of infection," he says. While many African governments signing these deals understand those dynamics, Kitui says they may still agree to more restrictive conditions as aid cuts have "starved health systems to a point of desperation."

Have information you want to share about ongoing changes at federal health and development agencies? Reach out to Jonathan Lambert via encrypted communications on Signal: @jonlambert.12