in many countries to leave a tip at say a restaurant,
one day Yuki
Tatsumi was working as a waiter in a restaurant, as he was
cleaning up a table, he noticed that a customer had intricately folded up the
paper chopstick sleeve and left it behind, Japan doesn’t have a culture of
tipping but Tatsumi imagined that this was a discreet, subconscious method of
showing appreciation, He began paying attention and sure enough noticed that
other customers were doing the same thing,
Tatsumi
began collecting these “tips” which eventually led to his art project, Japanese Tip, since 2012 Tatsumi has not only been collecting his own tips but he’s
reached out to restaurants and eateries all across Japan communicating his
concept and asking them to send him their tips,
the
response has been enormous. He’s collected over 13,000 paper sculptures that
range from obscure and ugly to intricate and elaborate, earlier this month
Tatsumi staged an exhibition in Tokyo where he displayed 8000 of some of the
most interesting sculptures sourced from all 47 prefectures around Japan,
“Japanese Tip is a project between restaurants and
customers,” says Tatsumi, “to communicate the ‘appreciation for food’ and
‘appreciation of the service’ by using
the most common material used at any Japanese restaurant.”
the exhibition has since closed but you can see some of the paper sculptures and can follow the initiative on Facebook, what a neat way to leave a small personalized 'thank you'.
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