Oishii Sekai Hand-Sewn Iron-On Patches
November 5, 2026 – Sachi Uchimaru
If you have ever been to Tokyo Station, you know it is equal parts a world-class train station and a world-class shopping mall. In Japan, it is a moral duty to buy omiyage (gifts for loved ones to bring home) whenever you travel, hence it makes sense that Tokyo Station strives to meet both those needs for the almost half a million travelers that go through it a day.
A few years ago while waiting to catch a train to visit one of our vendors, I joined the throngs of fellow omiyage-searchers in the belly of Tokyo Station when a display caught my eye: beautiful iron-on patches of my favorite foods. I grabbed a few for friends back in San Francisco and continued on my way.
Back at home I began the important task of sorting through my gifts and deciding who gets what. I then realized I just couldn’t part with the food patches—I loved them too much. As a buyer, I then decided that our customers at Bernal Cutlery would also love them if given the opportunity to buy them, so I reached out to the maker and quickly found out that he had never been asked to export his products outside of Japan before!
Oishii Sekai is a one person operation. Tajima-sama started the company when he came across a beautiful Italian embroidered patch at a craft store, and felt inspired to start making a living by creating things with his hands. He had never actually touched a sewing machine since home economics class in grade school, but was inspired enough to dive in. He was initially making the patches on the side while also doing his day job of event production of music festivals and bartending competitions, but recently was able to transition to making his patches full-time.
His initial products were ones he made because he imagined they would sell well. But as he was making them they didn’t quite feel right, and he realized it was because it was lacking his passion behind them. He pivoted to making designs he himself felt excited about, and one day had an idea—“If I made a patch of a filet of salmon, wouldn’t that be amazing?” After that, he says the concept for his company (Oishii Sekai, literally translated to Delicious World) came naturally.
He uses a sewing machine for home use to make all of his patches. Since the machine can only do one color at a time, he is constantly switching the spools of thread as one design uses many colors. For example the salmon patch requires orange, gray and white. He first creates the flesh with orange, then adds in the skin with white, the scale pattern on top of the skin with gray, and then finally the tendons with white. Other designs are more intricate and require even more layering and changing of the colors.
Once the embroidering is complete, he attaches an iron sheet to the back, and then each piece is heat-cut individually using a craft soldering iron. Since each one is cut by hand, there are small variations between the pieces. Tajima-sama asks that you pick your favorite one upon careful examination.
Tajima-sama strives to create designs that look delicious, first and foremost. For a peach, for instance, this means showing it cut into a slice so it highlights the ripened juicy flesh, or for a gyoza it means showing the underside with the brown crust.
To make sure that the patch is most appealing for the taste buds, he works to convey the image like a watercolor or pastel painting—mostly from color and tone, not necessarily with him spelling things out through outlining with lines. Even if he has picked the “right” color for the food from a color swatch book, if it doesn’t look right to him with adjacent colors, he will go back to the color swatch book with a closer eye to search for the perfect color. “Maybe this needs a green with a bit more blue”, or “an orange with a bit more yellow,” or “a brown with a bit less saturation,” for instance.
Thanks to this process, he now has over 400 colors and more than 500 spools of thread, waiting their turn to be used in his 8-tiered supply drawer.
Food has such visceral memories for everyone, he says, and he hopes that through his patches people can recall fond memories of the loved ones they shared that food with, or even feel a little bit hungry when they see it.
