Japanese Artist Makes Amazingly Realistic Wooden Food Carvings

Chips has a double meaning in the hands of artist Seiji Kawasaki.

He's transforming regular two-by-fours into amazingly realistic-looking food, like this pile of chips (ahem, wood chips), and the Internet can't get enough of it.

Kawasaki carves and paints giant, fleshy shrimp, lifelike chiles and burnished croissants that seem to crackle with great attention to detail. The Japanese artist almost has a Michelangelo-esque touch with his works, where the subject seems to break out of the wood, as you can see in the unfinished chocolate bar.

We can thank the wonderful people of Reddit who brought this Japanese wood carver to our attention. Kawasaki tells Bored Panda he wants to capture the "emergence of qualia," the bodily experience of feeling, smelling or, in this case, tasting. And I think we can all agree he's succeeding in that.

Clearly, the Japanese have proved themselves skilled in the art of fake food.