Back Issues Letters to the Ed. It's the Internet permeating all levels of society. Take Meiko Tanaka. Japanese people are extremely particular about food. Americans especially fail to grasp just how particular they are.
Chefs are TV celebrities.
If a restaurant is famous for its good food, people will line up for hours to get in, even if the meal is simply a quick bowl of ramen. If there's a good restaurant in a rural area, people from the city will travel for hours to get there. Entire family vacations are planned around where to eat. Tanaka formerly worked for a computer company, but as a hobby she made natural yeast bread. When the praise for her homemade baking reached a certain pitch among friends and relatives, she got the entrepreneurial bug, quit her job, and opened a bakery called Recette last December in the trendy Tokyo neighborhood of Sangenjaya.