The Best Reason to Check a Bag

The one thing most airport luggage conspicuously lacks is the ability to make a stranger genuinely hungry. Japanese company OMISE PARCO addressed that. They sold nylon suitcase covers designed to make your luggage look like an enormous piece of nigiri—salmon, shrimp, tamago—the kind of thing you’d order two of and eat too fast at a counter somewhere near Shinjuku.

I’ve seen a lot of luggage novelty. Most of it is depressing: aggressive geometric patterns, rubber handles in neon, the occasional cartoon face on a carry-on that someone thought was personality. The sushi covers are different. The scale is right, the colors are right, and the absurdity is committed enough that it tips into something genuinely worth smiling at. A full-size suitcase wrapped to look like a slab of salmon on rice earns its attention rather than demanding it.

The only real downside is spending the entire flight thinking about sushi you can’t have until landing.