My So-Called Japanese Life

Despite the fact that Valentine's Day was quite awhile back, my husband received the fun assortment of chocolates above from a student y...

Yesterday one of my students attended a lesson with me after attending a funeral. She had a largish shopping bag with her which contained th...

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 var...

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 bigg...

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 f...

Click this picture to see a larger one with more detail. One of my husband's students gave him the very cute " bento " picture...

One of the most common questions students ask me is, "have you ever been to a foreign country?" After informing them that I am alr...

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 ar...

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,...

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

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 ...

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...

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...

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 Ja...

The makings of a complete tea time snack One constant about Japanese people is that they give gifts, especially souvenirs from their travels...

This morning while I was groggily making coffee, I heard something get pushed through the mail slot and saw the note pictured above (click o...

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 thin...