Chocolate Sushi

Despite the fact that Valentine's Day was quite awhile back, my husband received the fun assortment of chocolates above from a student yesterday. He also got a box of truffles from the same student, and while they were lovely and sophisticated, they weren't quite as photogenic as the whimsical item pictured above.

The characters in white in the center of the label say "sushi". The banner with gold letters to the left says "special" and the real "joke" of this item are the black characters on the right which read as "cho-ko" though when written as kanji (Chinese characters), the words don't mean "chocolate" (choco), but (apparently) "sake cup". Somehow, I figure there must be another meaning I'm missing that applies to sushi. Usually, the word chocolate is not written in kanji, but rather in katakana which is the Japanese syllabary for (mostly) foreign words so it's sort of a joke. Ha. Ha. OK, we foreigners don't find the same amusement in Japanese wordplay as the Japanese might, but it's still cute.

Click this picture to see detail.

The contents are mainly blocks of chocolate wrapped in plastic with pictures of various seafood items on them, though the small packet filled with green balls is full of super sweet white chocolate bits coated with shiny green candy. These balls might be meant to resemble fish roe, I imagine, though I'm not sure (particularly since roe is reddish in color). They do look suspiciously like the stuff my father used to bait his hooks with from time to time when he went fishing. However, the packet itself has a picture of gnarled wasabi roots and says "wasabi choco" so perhaps this was the best they could do to emulate small amounts of wasabi. The candy also has an odd aftertaste which may actually be wasabi flavoring. The packaging is very well done right down to having the omnipresent fake plastic "grass" that you see in sushi assortments and a real wood container (that smells quite nice).

The chocolate with a picture of a shell on it has some funny English on it. On the front, around the shell, it says:

"Scallop stands a sail and runs all over the seas."

On the back, it says:

"There was a dog to which the sea is crossed. The ear was pinched with the husks of HOTATE."　

"Hotate" apparently means "sail upright" in one of its incarnations, though it can also mean "pilgrim". Without Chinese characters, it's impossible to know but all the talk of the sea makes the sailing definition likely, yet somehow, renders the sentence it is a part of no more logical.

Wedding "Gifts"

Yesterday one of my students attended a lesson with me after attending a funeral. She had a largish shopping bag with her which contained the gift she was given at the funeral (towels) and I took the occasion to quiz her on various aspects of money gifts in regards to the two big non-family occasions where money is frequently given. For the record, the other big money giving occasions is New Year's when kids are given cash as a gift (called "otoshidama"). However, non-family members don't tend to give kids cash at that time.

My relatively simplistic understanding of cash gifts in Japan was rather mixed up with my Western notions of why we give money. In fact, even when I know otherwise, it's difficult to separate the idea that we give money as a gift in the West to offer future security or assets to a person in the future. In Japan, money is given to cover costs of an event to which guests are invited, not as a personal bonus in celebration of an event.

At funerals, my student told me somewhat token amounts of money are given (about 5,000 yen ($46) for coworkers, 10,000 yen ($93) for closer friends or those who are older and have a higher status job) because the guest is not being treated to a lavishly catered experience. At weddings, however, she told me that the standard amount is 30,000 yen ($280) for any guest who isn't too young or underemployed to pay it. When I told her that this would be a bountiful financial gift by western standards and that even immediate family members (other than parents) would not give such an amount of money in most cases, she told me that family members don't pay this money at all. This came as a shock to me, but the way she explained it made sense. She said that the obligatory 30,000 yen is only paid by guests and family members are not considered "guests". She went on to explain that family members (again, aside from parents) will often give a real gift to celebrate a marriage, but not cash. According to my student, an exception to this "rule" is the case where a sibling is very much older than a younger sibling and the relationship is more parental as a result of the large age gap. In such cases, a sibling might give cash much as a parent would.

From a Western perspective, this seems a bit strange as it appears to require people who are less close to a couple to offer up more than family members. However, in Japan, the money is being used to pay for the facility where the reception (often called a "wedding party" by the Japanese) is held (often a hotel), the catering, and gift bags given to the guests. In other words, the 30,000 yen is the guest paying for his or her own "good time" at the party and not really a "gift" to the couple. The guests shoulder the burden of the cost of the celebration and not much more than that when the excessive cost of the hotel, which is sometimes between 1,000,000 ($9,315) and 2,000,000 yen ($18,630), is factored into the equation. Considering that family members won't be receiving souvenirs and sometimes don't partake of the catered food the same way as other guests, it makes a bit of sense that they don't pay what amounts to an "entrance fee" to the event.

From my perspective, this situation seems to have both advantages and disadvantages over the Western approach to wedding gifts. If you follow any trends in weddings back home these days, you'll notice that couples often treat their wedding as an opportunity to get as much cash from friends and family as possible. Many of them have already lived together for awhile and don't need much for their households so they try to coerce guests into giving them cash only or to choose from a small pool of very pricey high profile gifts. Rather than the wedding being an opportunity for people to offer their good wishes and a gift that will help the couple start their lives, they're being treated as a chance to milk their friends and family like cash cows so some lavish spending can be done by the couple on a vacation, car, etc. at everyone else's expense.

The Japanese approach to wedding gifts doesn't allow for this sort of crass exploitation of the event. In fact, the Japanese method is aimed at using the money to give guests a memorable experience though the drawback is that it's an experience the guest is footing the tab for. In fact, the worst point of this is that guests have no flexibility about what or how much they give in many cases and the "gift" is given most times out of obligation rather than good cheer and wishing the couple well. In the West, even if a couple asks you to give cash only (which is actually bad manners but people do it anyway), you can disregard their opportunism and do whatever you want. One could say that the money given at weddings in Japan supports the wedding industry and could be better spent on providing things the new couple may need.

My student said she had attended about 10 wedding recptions so far and each time had forked over the princely sum of 30,000 yen. When I asked her if her experiences made her consider what she'd like to do for her reception should she decide to marry in the future, she said she'd like to have a small "restaurant party" which is far less expensive, smaller, and only invites close friends. However, she said that, in the end, she's forked over a ton of dough to her friends and feels like she'd like to get some of it back so she'll likely have a lavish reception of her own some day to balance the scales.

Not So Much Cake, But Very Much Cheese

Image lifted from the seller's site here.

In a former post, I wrote about the quest for cheesecake in Tokyo and how there are many varieties. At that time, I lamented that most cheesecake wasn't very tangy or strongly cream cheese-flavored. One of my husband's students graciously gave him a cheesecake which showed that you can indeed get cheesecake which is very satisfyingly tangy if you seek out the right kind at the right place though it is different in other ways.



For one thing, the presentation of the cheesecake is quite elegant and sophisticated (as you can see from the picture at the top, not my picture where it's been opened). The "cake" is wrapped in paper to absorb some of the moisture (and it gets moister the second and third day) then wrapped in plastic and put in a little basket. For reference, it's about 5 inches (12.7 cm) in diameter.


When you open it up, there is not so much a cake as a dollop of whipped cheesecake filling. I've heard that this is French-style cheesecake though I'm guessing this particular presentation is very Japanese. It just has a real feel of a Japanese aesthetic to it. It's more of a cream cheese and whipped cream mousse than an actual cheesecake so it lacks the dense, decadent texture Americans are accustomed to but it has all of the delicious bite and flavor you expect. Though it's incredibly light, it's not necessarily low calorie. The web site says that it has 865 calories. The caloric density probably comes from the copious use of full fat cream, though it's not too bad when you consider it should be divided up into 4 or 5 servings.


One thing I really liked about this besides the yummy cream cheese flavor was that the packaging was so unique and attractive that I'm unlikely to forget this gift or the experience of eating it for quite some time. I'm well aware that the Japanese emphasis on wrapping and elaborate packaging is a bad thing for the environment, but I don't know how much was really wasted above and beyond what was absolutely necessary in this case. Given the free-form, super soft "cake", it had to be put in a very supportive container and better that it be a reusable basket made of bamboo than a plastic shell that gets chucked into the bin.

Gifts For Students

For many people who work as teachers, gift-giving in Japan is largely a one-way street. The students give and the teacher receives. The biggest reason for this is that the Japanese are in the habit of giving gifts as a means of building relationships and they particularly have the habit of giving gifts to people who offer services.

Further, it is also the case that each student has one teacher and each teacher has many students so it’s very impractical for the teacher to be giving gifts to students on a regular basis, at least if the teacher wants to be relatively egalitarian about it. Nonetheless, when my husband visited home last May, he spent a large amount of money on souvenir See’s Candy for the students who he saw repeatedly and who he felt a good emotional connection with. He wanted to indicate to them that he enjoyed the time he spent with them in lessons.

Since this is the season where people traditionally show their appreciation and affection, he wanted to work out a way to offer up a Christmas “gift” that would express this sentiment again to those people who he’d be encountering in mid to late December. For this, we decided to go back to doing something I used to do for my coworkers when I worked in a Japanese office. We assembled “goodie bags”.

In the past, my goodie bags were mainly a boatload of homemade baking goods including pumpkin cake, brownies, sugar cookies, and peanut butter cookies with a candy cane or maybe some peanut butter cup miniatures thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, I don’t have the energy or time to do all that baking. Also, while I delivered my goodies on one day and distributed them to the entire office at once, he needs to string out is gifts over 2 weeks as he sometimes sees students once every few weeks. This made timing everything rather complex and made it imperative that we mainly use items that would keep without freezing or loss of freshness.

My husband bought a vast quantity of imported chocolates and I made peanut butter cookies which we packaged up in craft bags. I drew a Calvin & Hobbes Christmas scene in Adobe Illustrator and we sealed them with a commercial Christmas sticker. As individual packs, they may not really be much of a big deal but assembling so many of them has taken a lot of time, effort, and expense. Fortunately, the students’ responses have been worth it. They have been unfailingly gracious and happy with the bags of treats.

One thing which isn’t necessarily unique to Japanese culture, but is definitely more common is that people are happier with the effort you make more so than the content of the gift you give. Back home, most gifts seem to be received with higher expectations about the value of the contents than about the gesture itself. Sometimes I wonder if this relates to the fact that we have more occasions where people “expect” big gifts or gifts in larger quantities (Christmas and birthdays) and this anticipation has an effect on how gifts are viewed overall. The focus seems to be on what it is rather than why it’s given. While I’m certainly not concluding that the Japanese have no focus on what it is or that people back home never think about why it’s given, I think the heavier focus tends to be on why in Japan and what in the U.S.

Hanamasa

The spoils of a trip to Hanamasa.

When my husband and I first arrived in Japan, there was pretty much no such thing as bulk food shopping for the average consumer in Tokyo. There are several reasons why this is the case though I'm not sure which is the primary one. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because the small size of domiciles makes it difficult to store large quantities of items is the biggest reason. Another is that married Japanese women used to be housewives for the most part and they had the time and inclination to shop every day. Finally, the Japanese value freshness and feel uncomfortable buying a lot of something and keeping it around for awhile.

While most families still don't shop for items they can purchase in bulk, restaurants do need to get supplies somewhere and that is where Hanamasa supermarket seems to have gotten its start. Back when we first encountered it, part of the advertising indicated that it was focused on (possibly small) restaurant supply. Given the huge quantities you could buy in one package, this made sense.

The origins of Hanamasa are in meat sales (it began with a butcher shop) and that's reflected in the selections they offer. At the picture at the top of this post, you'll see smoked chicken, sliced ham (named "Winning Ham"), and two kinds of sausage. "Meister Rudolf's" is Hanamasa's brand designed to imitate German-made meat products and a lot of the sausage is pretty fatty. When we cook it, we usually drain off as much as possible and blot them on paper towels. For meat, the prices are relatively economical. Five hundred grams (about 1 lb.) of hot sausage is ¥418 ($3.72) and 2.2 lbs. (1 kg.) of "bologna sausage" is ¥1,080 ($9.66). The only down side to the large portions is that it's too much to eat before it spoils so you really need to repackage and freeze portions.

In addition to their own brand-name products, they carry a constant supply of imports including cheese. Pictured above are mozzarella, Gouda (both from Australia), and red cheddar (from New Zealand). The prices recently went up from 100 yen (89 cents) per 100 grams (3.5 oz.) to 130 yen ($1.16) per 100 grams, but it's still cheaper than imported cheese in most markets in Japan. The blocks above are 1 kg. (2.2 lbs.) each and most cheese is sold in these large portions, but it keeps exceptionally well if you re-seal it in the same wrapping that it comes in. Cheese isn't supposed to be kept in plastic wrap and will get moldy faster if it can't breath.

While Hanamasa does carry fresh fruit and vegetables, they aren't a great deal cheaper than other outlets. I've also found that some of the fruit seems a bit past its prime, but I can't say that I've shopped for such items at Hanamasa often enough to say that that is consistently the case.


Finally, imported goodies are available sporadically. If you find something you like at Hanamasa, you have to stock up because there's every chance that they won't be around next time you visit.

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As an aside, the day my husband shopped at Hanamasa, one of his students gave him the South Park tote bag pictured above. Somehow, it seems appropriate that a bag talking about Salisbury Steak day was given to him on the day he went to a place that specializes in meat. It also came in pretty handy for carrying some of the items he bought back home.

Candy Bento

Click this picture to see a larger one with more detail.

One of my husband's students gave him the very cute "bento" pictured above. All of the candy is hard sugar candy fashioned to resemble typical Japanese boxed lunch fare. The "rice" is made up of white "konpeito" which I usually don't see in markets unless it's around the time of the Children's Day holiday or White Day. Most people assume konpeito is candy of Japanese origin but it's actually from Portugal.

The red candy in the middle of the "rice" represents umeboshi (a very sour pickled plum). Umeboshi is one of those things, along with natto (sticky, stinky fermented soybeans), that the Japanese delight in asking foreigners if they like or not. Most of them assume we'll hate them because they are very sour, but I actually like them. It's not the sort of thing you'd snack on but they are a nice accompaniment to certain dishes. When I worked in Nishi-Shinjuku, there was a tonkatsu (breaded, fried pork cutlet) restaurant near our office which kept a little pot full of umeboshi on the table for patrons to partake of while eating their meal. I haven't really had much umeboshi since then, but one of my students brought me an umeboshi hard candy which was popular at her company. While I really like umeboshi, I think it's not the sort of thing that goes well with sugar.

Other items being mimicked in this candy bento appear to include an orange slice, a mushroom, various Japanese pickles, and possibly a carrot. There's even a little fake piece of plastic greenery in it like regular real bento. I'm not sure what the point of these little bits of plastic are, but they look like a little hedge of grass and are used to embellish raw meat sold in trays in finer shops in addition to bento. The tray is made of plastic meant to imitate traditional Japanese lacquer ware.

This is a very cute little souvenir, but it's so precious that it's almost too cute to eat. Fortunately, there's a little silica gel packet in it to preserve it so you can keep it around for awhile if you'd prefer to look at it rather than eat it. Even though I'm not a great fan of sugar-based hard candy (because of the impact on my teeth), I did sample a piece and the colors do appear to relate to the flavors. The piece that looks like a carrot is orange-flavored and quite nice for a bit of hard candy. The main problem is that some of the larger pieces are too big to comfortably hold in your mouth for the duration that it takes to consume it.

French Goodies

One of the most common questions students ask me is, "have you ever been to a foreign country?" After informing them that I am already in a foreign country from my point of view, they usually ask me if I've been to other countries. The only country I've been to besides Japan (and the U.S.) is Canada, so I tend to get asked what other place I'm interested in visiting. Usually, I say Spain because Spanish is the only other language I have any experience with and some of my husband's family roots trace back there.

One of the places I have little interest in visiting is France. I know it's a very beautiful country and has a lot to offer culturally, but I also know they have no patience for Americans who can't speak French, and I can't speak it at all. I don't want to go somewhere and pay people to be rude to me and treat me like a second-class human being because I'm from a particular country and can't speak their language. Of course, these days, being American is pretty much enough to get you treated like the plague pretty much anywhere in the world. Hating Americans isn't considered a prejudice amongst most folks who are inclined to do so. However, the Japanese aren't quite as inclined to tar and feather us all because our current president is doing his best to completely destroy America on both the domestic and international fronts. I guess they feel as disconnected from the politicians who control their country as we do.

Some of my students have gone to France and told me that they were surprised that the French people were so polite and helpful (in most cases) even though they (my students) can't speak French. I always tell them that French people don't appear to have the same issues with non-native English speakers who can't speak their language as they do with people from other countries. Of course, I have no idea how valid these thoughts are as I have no first-hand experience. I can only say that the French reputation for rudeness is quite pervasive as reflected by both my conclusions and the preconceived notions of my traveling students, though it is certainly likely a lot of it is unfair as most negative generalizations about groups of people are.

One of my husband's students recently went to France and brought him back some incredibly nice goodies. One was a bag of cookies from La Cure Gourmande and the other was a canister of chocolate truffles from Jeff de Bruges. The cookies are a collection of very dense, crunchy, buttery biscuits in various flavors. They have a unique texture heavily influenced by what I'm guessing is the use of a grainy sugar. They have a unique smell which I can't quite pin down but is vaguely reminiscent of dill (of all things). Though there are various flavors, (e.g., coconut, orange with lemon) they all seem to smell the same. Because they are dense and hard, one approaches them with low expectations, but they are incredibly good in a way you don't often experience in cookies in either Japan or the U.S. I'd love to know the techniques and recipes for them.

The truffles have crispy, delicate chocolate shells with light, incredibly creamy fillings. They are clearly high quality and have rich, chocolate flavor without being overbearing. The student either bought very high quality souvenirs for my husband or French sweets live up to their high reputation (or both). They're so good it's almost worth considering going to France. ;-)

Gift-Giving

Much is made of Japanese gift-giving and how it occurs at the drop of a hat. I think that the ritualized and formal manner in which gifts are given tends to make it seem more frequent and obvious compared to western cultures than it actually is. If you examined the frequency of "gifts" in both cultures, I'm betting they'd actually come out pretty even.

When I say "ritualized and formal manner", I mean that nothing seems to be handed over casually in Japan. If you receive even a small item like a chocolate bar or a cupcake, it's usually wrapped in paper or at the very least given in a bag. In the States, we might give someone a souvenir or box of candy but we just say something like, "I picked up this (whatever) for you when I was in (wherever)." Such gifts don't feel like they're part of a gift-giving occasion because they aren't wrapped or hidden in any fashion.

A very sweet thank you note from our landlord.

The formal nature of gift-giving was brought home several days ago when my husband went to Krispy Kreme for some birthday-related donuts and decided to pick up a half dozen to give to the landlord and his family. Back home, this sort of "gift" is often casually handed over and the other party is thanked and that's it. In Japan, such acts often elicit either a return gift or a formal thank you note. This is rather a nice thing except that you can find yourself sometimes hesitating to give a gift out of fear of placing the other person in a position of feeling obliged to reciprocate. This isn't something we tend to worry about so much back home (except at Christmas).

The other thing which tends to make gift-giving in Japan appear more remarkable is that gifts are often given in the opposite situation as they are back home and they are offered more consistently because of social obligation. For instance, if a new person moves into one of the six units in our building, that person often (but not always) goes door-to-door to the other 5 tenants and gives a small gift like a tea towel or small food item (e.g., bean cakes, soba). In the U.S., a new neighbor is sometimes greeted by the the people in his new neighborhood with gifts. The concept of the "Welcome Wagon" is based on the idea that the new party is made to feel a part of the community through experiencing the warmth of neighboring people and businesses through gifts. In Japan, the responsibility is on the newcomer. In the U.S., the responsibility is on the existing social network.

With Christmas on the horizon, thoughts of western gift-giving habits aren't far from my mind. At this time of year, there's an explosion of consumerism, obligation and generosity back home (a time which starts earlier and earlier). Japan has no equivalent of the sort of excess the U.S. has in this regard, at least not on a personal level. The closest they come is winter and summer gift-giving but that isn't quite the same as it's largely confined to business giving and usually isn't personalized as it mainly involves giving gift packs of food, soap, or other utilitarian items.

The other big personal gift-giving situation back home, birthdays, tends not to be an occasion for giving gifts here either. When I ask my students whether or not they got many birthday gifts, most of them say they got one or none but just went out to a bar or restaurant with their friends. I sometimes feel a little bad for them when they say they don't get anything but then I realize they don't expect anything anyway so it's not a big deal to them.

Generally speaking, I think people in the U.S. give gifts in similar quantity but they tend to give them so casually that they're not seen as gifts and those gifts which are given as formal, wrapped presents tend to be tightly attached to two specific occasions whereas in Japan gifts are almost always formal and not necessarily closely attached to occasions.

Trivial Chocolates

I haven't done any posts for awhile about souvenirs or gifts students have given my husband or me. One of the reasons is sheer laziness, particularly with going to the trouble of taking a picture but another is that most of the gifts have been nice but unremarkable. My husband brought home some chocolates the other day which we both found interesting.


This particular box of chocolates comes with 4 Trivial Pursuit cards and 24 miniature chocolate bars. The cards are in German so we can't read them but the concept is one I believe we'd never see back home in the U.S. There are a few reasons I think this and the primary one relates to the fact that I think, by and large, Trivial Pursuit is a game designed to attract adults and chocolate is mainly something targeted at children. The combination of these two things seems to be a way of encouraging people to see these as two great things that go great together, sort of like a game version of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

The other reason I think it wouldn't be offered in the U.S. is that I believe Trivial Pursuit isn't something America finds all that attractive anymore. In fact, after the initial boom, I don't think many people were all that into it because they found the game too difficult for them. My husband and I used to play Trivial Pursuit and bought some of the later card sets and found that they seemed to be dumbing them down and specializing them in an attempt to make the game easier for people with a less than stellar general knowledge.

Of course, that's not to say I was incredibly great shakes at the game. While I did very well with science, art, literature, and entertainment, I was hopeless at sports and recent American history (though I was fine at earlier history and world history for the most part). For instance, while my husband knew everything Richard Nixon had done wrong and who had caught him, I was clueless about such details. Anyone with an interest in politics or baseball scores had a distinct advantage compared to someone who knew who painted "The Birth of Venus" or who had read "The Catcher in the Rye".

Back when we were playing this game though, the absolute worst category for me was sports. I didn't know anything about any sport (and still don't except for sumo) and it became a running joke that I would answer any sports question with "Pete Rose" even though I knew he was a baseball player and the question was about hockey or football. There were many occasions where I couldn't finish or win the game because I'd be trying repeatedly for that last sports and recreation piece of the plastic pie and never happen upon the type of question (recreation) which I had a shot at getting right. If it wasn't a question about playing jacks (or a non-sports game) or a scandalous and notorious sports personality in the last 5 years, I wasn't going to get the question right.

While, we did enjoy playing Trivial Pursuit together, my husband had too great an advantage and I too great a disadvantage and all the games ended the same way (with me chasing around that last orange wedge and never getting it). It was better when we teamed up with other people but our friends were often from other countries (the U.K., Australia, etc.) and our American version of the game carried a distinct bias for America-based information which was unfair to them. In the end though, computer games which took up less space to play and store usurped the role of board games in our lives. In fact, I'd pretty much say that Warcraft II was the first nail in the coffin of the more gentle days of sitting around a board, rolling a die and racking our brains to answer questions on cards.

Small Toys

The "Jet Hot" Pepper Sauce ad says "salt and vinegar are added to the mashed red pepper, and raw material keeps a long period with the red pepper, the salt and the vinegar with a barrel."

After you've lived in a place for awhile, certain things become so mundane as to essentially become invisible. Some things are of relatively little interest to begin with and fade away faster than others. The sections of markets for sweets and children's toys is on of those things childless adults never give a second glance to.

Every grocery store tends to have a section amongst the candy which specializes in small boxes with various toys for kids. The range of items is ever-changing though on-going themes are common. Several years ago, for instance, one could find series of very realistic and highly-detailed plastic animal "sculptures". These toys were as much for adults as for kids and I'm not sure that that isn't a case for a lot of the toys in these sections of stores. Stackable plastic display cases for collections of small toys are readily available at 100 yen shops to allow collectors to display their items.

One series of toys that I've seen for quite some time on the rare occasions when I pay attention to the toy sections are miniature food collections. For reasons that are unclear to me, one of my husband's students bought him a box of a "Pasta & Italian" collection of these tiny toys. If you look at the bigger version of the picture at the top of this post, you can see there is a tiny gnocchi, olive oil, cheese sauce, marinara sauce, Parmesan cheese, and hot sauce.

Each of the items is very detailed. The gnocchi has a little block of plastic in it with individual gnocchi. Every label of every item is completely detailed with full text even though it's impossible to read at such a small size. There's also a little grocery bag (about 3 inches tall) folded up behind a reproduction of a store flyer. The items are close to being to scale. The bag is either a little too big or the food a little too small.

The detail is quite impressive and does tend to indicate that such toys are for adult collectors rather than kids who one might imagine wouldn't care about that much care being taken in creating these miniatures. Also, the food items are so small that kids would very likely have trouble handling them and would lose them in no time. What is worse is that they'd very likely end up cramming them into various orifices.

Besides the little toys, there's a small piece of "soda" flavor gum which is rather similar to a Chiclet. I'm guessing the only reason this gum is in the box is to meet some sort of requirement that food must be present in items placed in the candy aisle of the store.

Winter Gift Giving

Japan has two gift-giving seasons, one in the winter and one in the summer. The winter one is called oseibo and the summer one is o-chugen. These gift-giving times are different from the type of holiday gift-giving you find in the U.S. In the States, piles of presents are given at once during Christmas and family and friends are a heavy focal point for such gift-giving.

In Japan, the gifts that are given during the two seasons tend to be less personal and are given to people who you have a relationship with in order to express gratitude for the relationship and to juice the bond between the parties a little. They're also given out of obligation in many cases.

At my former company, we used to receive large quantities of such gifts twice a year. During the first half decade or so of the 12 years I worked at my office, the office ladies would take all the goodies around to every person in the office and distribute them. As the years went on and the company's business diminished and fewer gifts came in, they tended to keep them tucked away as much as possible for themselves, especially if the gift was chocolate, cake, cookies, or Japanese sweets.

They were especially good at skipping the foreigners on distribution rounds of such items because we were tucked away in cubicles and couldn't see what was going on until we entered the main office to see a goodie on every desk. Mind you, I don't think this was about prejudice, I think it was about opportunity. We were the only ones who weren't in the regular open office plan so it was easier to skip us without making it obvious. When it came to a choice between another chocolate in their desk drawer for later snacking or doing the courteous thing, the chocolate won.

Two staple types of gifts were senbei (rice crackers) and beer. Nearly every year we would get a tin the size of a 5-gallon drum full of a variety of senbei that would keep the office girls going for weeks. The cases of beer were very slowly consumed by salespeople or possibly taken home. The truth is that I only saw the staff drink on the job at the end of the end of the year office cleaning session.

Being foreigners, my husband and I are rarely direct recipients of such gifts as they seem to be exchanged more as part of business relationships than personal ones. While students give teachers little souvenir gifts (omiyage) on occasion or small gifts of appreciation, they don't tend to give summer or winter gifts to teachers. My husband received the box of Godiva chocolate and cookies (pictured above) from the mother of one of his very few child students. Given that the Japanese are embracing Christmas gift-giving more and more, it's hard to tell if this was an oseibo gift or related to Christmas but my money is on it being a winter gift (and quite a nice one at that).

Fond Gustatory Memories

One of my husband's students is a generous gift-giver. She's given him a fair number of food items, mostly based on foods he says he favors. Today, she gave him 6 small cupcakes and a carton of frosting. The funny thing is that these cupcakes are just the kind we had as kids or the type you buy at bake sales in the states. It's an experience neither my husband nor I have had for more than 20 years now but it is a crystal clear taste memory.

It turns out that the student bought these at a church bake sale in Nerima-ku. They were made by foreign women who were a part of the church. That would explain why they taste like the so much like what we could get back home. The cupcakes were almost certainly made with cake mixes imported from the U.S. It's the sort of thing that you appreciate more even though it's not all that important because it's such a rare touch of home and it brings bake an enjoyable experience from childhood.

When it comes to memory, smell is the strongest memory cue followed by taste. That is, if you smell something familiar, you are likely to remember something associated with when and where you have smelled it in your past. The same goes for taste. It could be because both of these are chemical-based senses. It could be because having strong memory cues with smell and taste increased the chances of survival of our ancestors.

During my time in Japan, I've noticed that both smell and taste have been the most frequent senses to "carry me back" to moments from my childhood in the U.S. Most of the time, it's a good experience but sometimes it makes me a bit melancholy and homesick. I'm not sure if that's because I miss any particular food so much as perhaps I miss being a child and having far fewer problems and finding that far simpler things, like a cupcake, made me happy.

Gratitude

As I mentioned before, one of my students got into the college for which I'd been helping her prepare for an interview. I thought at the time that I should get her a gift to congratulate her but my numerous health issues as of late derailed that thought. After a 10-day break, she had a lesson with me again and brought me a gift (pictured above).

For those who don't live in Japan, most gifts from Japanese people arrive looking like this. That is, they are wrapped at the store in store-brand paper and often handed to you in a shopping bag from that store. It's pretty rare to get a gift from a Japanese person which they have wrapped by hand. In fact, I can't recall ever getting a gift which was wrapped by hand.

As far as I know, the etiquette for such gifts is to accept them graciously and set them aside to be opened later when the person who gave them is not present. I think they'd find it pretty embarrassing otherwise but this could be one of those points on which I'm uncertain of what to do. Even if I was told it was okay to open a gift in front of a student, I'm not sure I would as it would waste time the student is paying for.


The gift was these two bone china coffee cups. They're average in size which is to say somewhat large by Japanese standards. She told me one was for me and one for my husband (hence the pink and blue). They are Minton Haddon Hill collection china which means they are part of a proper china pattern (the sort that couples register for when they marry). I'm sure they were relatively expensive.

In the future, the lessons I do with this student will now turn to helping her pass her classes. She just started taking two of them and it's all pretty overwhelming for her now as her first class is about the justice system in the United States focusing on the juvenile court system. The funny thing is that I understand almost everything in her textbook despite never having studied anything about the subject. It's a real testimonial to the number of courtroom dramas on television in the U.S. and how they introduce us to a lot of the legal system's jargon and structure.

Corn Consumption in Japan

I dedicate this post to 0tarin, who thinks I made up corn 'cup-a-soup'.

Many foreigners have posted about the odd uses of corn in Japan, particularly the preoccupation with putting it on pizza. I have to admit that one of my earliest fast food dining experiences resulted in a similar appalled reaction. I was at Shakey's pizza where they offered an "all you can eat" buffet which included corn pizza. It was more of a "nothing you can eat" experience for my husband and I.

I'm not much of a fan of corn but I have become really attached to 'corn cream soup', especially when I can toss a ton of American Cardini's croutons in it (from Costco in Japan). I'm sure that makes it doubly bad for me; a real carbohydate-loaded treat.

Rumor has it that the Japanese have been known to put corn on ice cream but I've never actually seen that. I have seen my fair share of buns at convenience stores and bakeries that lovingly cradle a generous bed of mayonnaise studded with corn in the center. I'm too scared and disgusted to brave eating one but I have to admit that these buns represent overuse of two of the most oddly-used western foodstuffs in Japan.

I did a little research and apparently the Japanese corn growers can't keep up with the insatiable demand for canned and frozen sweet corn in Japan and most of it is imported from the U.S. Eighty percent of Japan's corn is from imports but very little of it appears to be fresh. Its' relatively rare to see ears of fresh corn at local shops and it's usually pretty expensive.

Incidentally, the cup in the picture was part of a set of dishes I was given when I left my company after working there for 12 years. All of them are largely white with a swirly pattern.

Gifts from Students

The makings of a complete tea time snack

One constant about Japanese people is that they give gifts, especially souvenirs from their travels. Teachers in particular are recipients of their largesse. Since my husband sees a great many people each day at the conversation school where he works, it's not uncommon for him to bring home little surprises that students have given him. The above picture was today's takings. I first heard of Geisha chocolate, a Finnish confection, from Roy's blog. Roy didn't say anything about how good it is. It's full of extremely yummy hazelnut filling. The types of tea are written in Finnish but I believe it's vanilla, rooibos, and quince (vanilj, rooibos, and kvitten).

In the past, he's been given wine, dates, sake, various candies and cookies, bean cakes, mochi, nuts, maple syrup, coffee beans and wafers. My students have given me manju, green tea, lavender hand lotion and liquid soap, herbal tea, chocolate, fruit jellies, hand towels and, recently, ear medicine for my husband's ear blockage problems. They are nothing if not generous and inventive.

I've noticed my husband receives more food than anything else and I receive a mixture of food and personal items. I'm not sure if this is because I'm a woman or if it has to do with my teaching from the house and being a housewife. I tend to suspect it's the former.

Of course, the Japanese give each other gifts frequently as well. At weddings, each guest receives a bag (sometimes large, sometimes small) with souvenirs of the wedding. It's a nice custom though it tends to become a burden for them at times. More than one person has told me that the expense and obligation of gift-giving can be a bit tedious for them at times. That's not to say they don't often gladly give gifts, particularly to foreigners who they are under no obligation to give anything to.

One of my students told me about an experience he had recently related to gift-giving. An American couple that visited Japan recently had dinner with his wife and he and another Japanese couple at the other couple's home in Tokyo. He and his wife gave the Americans a framed picture of Mt. Fuji and the other couple gave them some Japanese lacquerware. The American couple didn't speak Japanese at all so the Japanese couples did their best to muddle through in English. Unfortunately, my student isn't very proficient though he tries hard.

When the American couple was preparing to leave, my student, a 64-year-old man, noticed that they had left their gifts in the corner of the room they had dined in. He said, "don't forget to leave it (the gifts) over there." The American man looked at him with great puzzlement and my student wondered what happened. When he explained it to me in the lesson, he was very embarrassed to realize he'd essentially said the opposite of what he wanted to say.

More Gifts in Apology

This morning while I was groggily making coffee, I heard something get pushed through the mail slot and saw the note pictured above (click on the picture to see a large one that you can actually read). This note is from our landlord and, while it doesn't state explicitly so, I'm sure this is another gift because of the trouble they feel we were put through because of the renovation in the kitchen.


It was very nice of them to do this, particularly given how special they feel this food is and how troublesome it is to obtain.


My husband and I gave the meatballs a try and they're pretty good though I'm not especially a fan of fried food. They're kind of like a meatball tonkatsu (breaded, fried pork cutlet). They're quite huge and taste a lot like meatloaf inside.

The note and the fact that people line up for these meatballs reminds me of these types of food fads in Japan where there are certain places people line up to get things. I sometimes see T.V. programs about these places where business is booming and wonder how long their popularity lasts.

They Still Confuse Me

After having lived in Japan for 17+ years, Japanese people still confuse me. I try very hard to figure out their take on things and see things from their perspective but some things still take me by surprise.

Today, a repairman came to fix the bathroom door which stopped closing after our kitchen floor had been replaced. He was here for about 6 hours ripping up part of the floor again, moving our washing machine and trying to work out how to get the door to close. There was a lot of hammering, drilling, and all our stuff once again was put in the middle of the floor. It was a hassle but sometimes you have to put up with the bad for the future good and it certainly was no one's fault that we were inconvenienced.

Our landlord and his wife coordinated all the repair as well as paid for it. They took time out of their day to come over and check repeatedly with the repairman as well as communicate with him and us about what was happening. During all this time, they profusely apologized for putting us out. When it was all said and done, and after many more apologies, they gave us a gift. The fairly expensive-looking bottle of red wine pictured above was given to us, apparently to apologize for any way in which we might have been bothered by the floor replacement and subsequent repair.

Unfortunately, we discovered last night that the door still hasn't been properly repaired and we'll have to go another round with the servicepeople. It closes completely now but pops open constantly. :-p I wonder if we'll warrant another gift after all this.

In the U.S., I'm guessing apologizing for any inconvenience a tenant suffers as the landlord repairs something would be unheard of, let alone offering a gift at the end. Most U.S. landlords probably feel they were doing you a big enough favor just by paying for extensive repair. Of course, it's possible that my landlords are just unusually nice people and this atypical even by Japanese standards.