Photo/Illutration Osechi (foods prepared for New Year) made of paper, except for the boxes (Provided by Kazuhiko Nishitaki)

OSAKA--One day, Kazuhiko Nishitaki decided to play a prank on his wife, knowing she often got peckish at work and would reach for something to eat that she had brought from home.

In this case, the target of his humor was a pie snack that he had fashioned from paper to look like the real thing. His wife got the shock of her life when she realized she had been tricked.

And so started Nishitaki's quest to make fake food out of paper. Eventually, his works attracted a huge following on social networking sites after his son, Naoto, decided to show them off in February of last year.

Nishitaki, 74, an Osaka resident, did design-related work when he was employed in the advertising department of a housing sales company.

Ten years ago, he tried his hand at making a three-dimensional food items out of paper for the first time, and realized he was pretty good at it. That got him to place fake food items among the snacks that his wife took to the office.

His wife's astonishment that she could be fooled so easily got him started on making fake food in earnest.

As time went by, he would place a dried sardine made of paper into the refrigerator and hand over a melon-flavored bun made of paper to his grandchild.

His son Naoto, a 47-year-old painter, was convinced his father had a special talent and decided the time had come to show off his creations by opening a Twitter account (@meganenooo).

Initially, the number of likes hovered at just 20, but gradually the quality of Nishitaki's works started attracting more attention. Comments started pouring in, such as “It is not eatable? Unbelievable!” and ”It looks delicious!”

Now, the account boasts tens of thousands of likes and more than 4,000 followers.

A single piece can take from one hour to three days to get right. So far, Nishitaki has come up with 200 or so items, such as simmered fish, Osechi (foods prepared for New Year), Sakuramochi (rice-cake with bean jam wrapped in a preserved cherry leaf), hand-rolled sushi, and steamed potato with butter.

The primary materials he uses are "washi" traditional Japanese paper, newspaper and leaflets that are inserted into newspapers.

Recently he began using papier-mache as a base of his work. He does not paint his creations but utilizes the natural color of the paper.

All his subjects are food. The supermarket he goes to with his wife for daily shopping offers tons of hints. On the sales floor, he can sense the change in seasons and fire up his imagination.

Nishitaki was taken by surprise by the reaction on Twitter to his creations.

A library in Shodoshima island, which is in Kagawa Prefecture and where he was born, asked him to come and exhibit his works and hold workshops. He hopes to get around to doing that this summer.

“I started to make fake food, which was a way of killing time and perhaps a bit of mischief,” he said. “If my works please many people and become helpful for my hometown, I am extremely delighted.”

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