Candy Bento

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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.

Reciprocation

My husband returned yesterday from his week-long visit with his family in the U.S. (and there truly was much rejoicing as well as crying). There is more than one tale to tell but I'll start with souvenirs. In the past, I've mentioned that my husband has received gifts from students and now he's returning the favor. The picture above is the large quantity of See's candy that he bought to give to his favorite students.

There are 13 of the boxes with American flags. They each have 4 pieces of candy and cost about $5 each. My husband chose this design because these are souvenirs from a trip to the U.S., not out of some sense of patriotism. There are 4 of the seashell design boxes and they are pretty much the same as the flag boxes. They just have a different design. My husband will be giving these to the majority of students but the larger boxes wrapped in blue paper are 1 lb. boxes which he'll give to those he enjoys teaching the most (these cost $17.50). The peanut brittle and peanut chews are for anyone he misses with the chocolate, I guess.

This was actually a pretty sizable investment considering See's isn't cheap. However, my husband wants to show those students who have regularly taken his classes for the last few years and who have been fun to teach how much he appreciates them. I guess this may look to some extent like him greasing wheels to ensure that the students continue to be devoted to him but that's not the way he is. He's sweet, generous, sincere and genuine. That's why he has so many regular students who enjoy lessons with him. He doesn't need to bribe them with chocolates.


My husband is a particular fan of See's because he grew up with them and he wouldn't miss the rare chance to pick some up for us as well. This picture is of the friendly See's lady holding the two-pound custom box he picked out for us. I'm guessing it'll take us ages to get through this and it's currently sitting un-opened in the fridge.


One can buy See's candy in Japan (in Shibuya) but the prices are outrageous. My husband dropped by there awhile back and took some pictures. The box pictured above is of a 2 lb. gold box for $112. In the U.S., this box is $35.60. You can guess that we don't buy much See's in Japan and can't blame him for going a little overboard when he patronized one in the U.S.

Incidentally, there is a move by some major chocolate manufacturer's in the U.S. (Hershey's, for one) to re-define chocolate so that the cocoa butter content can be reduced and replaced by vegetable fats and the resulting product can be advertised as real chocolate (despite being more of a "mockolate"). See's was (and may still be) one of the companies that opposes this which is why the topic springs to mind. I actually don't mind if chocolate companies make this switch as long as they are required to print the fact that it's no longer real chocolate on the label. However, the way this is going, it will allow companies to make this substitution and not make it clear which candy is "real" and which is using cheaper ingredients.

Souvenirs

Since I've been in Japan for quite some time, I haven't bought or sent any souvenirs home for quite some time. When I first got here, I frequently visited a very nice local souvenir shop and picked up items which I'd send home to my family. In particular, I used to send along a figure for each New Year's representative animal in the Chinese zodiac.

After awhile, it seemed the novelty of such items wore off and my mother's sight began to worsen (she has retinitis pigmentosa) and she couldn't really enjoy the little things I sent. I could have offered some olfactory, auditory (wind chimes) or gustatory delights instead but the first two were not something my father would allow in his presence and the last something which is of very dubious value. I'm pretty sure my mother would much rather I sent her a box of chocolate pecan turtles from See's than a box of bean cakes.

My husband's family is also pretty well covered on the souvenir front. His brother goes home every year and has been taking home a variety of items for everyone, particularly his young nephews. So, it's been quite awhile since I've gone souvenir shopping.

My mother e-mailed me about a week or so ago and asked me to buy some uniquely Japanese things as gifts for a woman who helps her through social assistance for the blind. She didn't actually give me any clue about what this woman might like to have or what her character is like. The only thing I know is that she is middle-aged and has three daughters from age 6 to about 15 and she's unlikely to fit into Japanese women's size clothing. I also decided that any type of plates or dinnerware were ruled out because of the high likelihood of breaking and the relatively smallish size of Japanese plates, bowls and cups.

The local souvenir shop (on Pearl Road in Asagaya) has some really nice items which are well-made but relatively expensive. Given the uncertainty I feel about what I should buy, I decided to opt for buying a plethora of lower-priced items at the Daiso shop rather than one or two choice items from the nicer place. Most of the things pictured above are 100 yen each (except the prince and princess figures which were 315 yen).

The only type of items pictured above that I'd sent to friends back home before were a fan (a considerably more expensive one) and the cup and ball toy which I sent a very long time ago to a friend for his step-son. Apparently, the cup and ball was a big hit so I'm hoping this woman's youngest daughter will like it (and not injure herself swinging it around).

To be honest, I'm so far removed now from how a tourist might regard Japan that I have no idea what types of things they might enjoy so I picked up the things that looked the cutest. I did notice that there were a great many souvenirs and that all of them have bi-lingual tags or labels on them so they are clearly meant for foreign friends to receive as souvenirs despite being sold in a decidedly non-tourist/souvenir type of shop. I also noted, ironically, that many of the "Japanese" souvenirs were made in China. ;-)

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.

Swag

I spent a lesson this evening talking to my only male student about a golf driving range he goes to. When trying to remember the name of the place, he rummaged around in his bag and pulled out the pen with a little golf ball on it that you see above. In Japan, these things are called "presents" but it is called swag in the U.S. For those who don't know, swag refers to the freebie stuff you get in promotions. Supposedly, it is called that because it refers to "stuff we all get" but I think it's more about coining pirate talk. ;-)

One thing I loved about going to MacWorld expos was collecting swag. Unfortunately, the MacWorld expos I attended were in Japan and the swag often consisted of items I couldn't use like CDs or floppy disks full of Japanese software. Also, after a few expos, the quality and amount of swag really seemed to drop.

Fortunately, one of our friends continued to attend MacWorld expos for awhile after we stopped and she used to send me boxes of swag she collected for me. Among the items she sent me was the bag pictured above. Since I'm an Adobe fan, I was especially keen on this item and I've had it for a number of years, as you can see by the version numbers of the software advertised on the bag.

Despite the fact that swag is free and is essentially advertising, a lot of people really like it. In fact, some people like it so much that they'll pay for it. There's a swag subscription service in California called Valley Schwag which will send you a package once a month of swag from various conventions and whatnot. It's mainly geared toward geeks who want to show off in super cool swag that makes people think they're with the in crowd technologically.

Bean Cakes That Resemble Things

I'm not a great fan of Japanese sweets but I did take to white bean sweets almost from the first time I tried them. White bean cakes and buns are different from the more popular red bean cakes in that the beans are finer and usually sweeter. That's not to say they compare to a Twinkie or Krispie Kreme in sweetness but, by Japanese standards, they are higher up on the sweetness scale.

I had my first taste of my absolute favorite white bean cake early on during my time in Japan while working at a conversation school. A student brought the cakes in as a souvenir and shared them with the teachers. They were called "kogane imo" and we liked them so much that we tracked them down from the address on the box. It's been so long since I last had them that I forgot where the shop was located, but my husband says that the place we found them in was Ningyocho.

They are called "imo" because they are brown and shaped like potatoes. They had cinnamon on the outside but weren't overly sweet or sugary. They also tasted vaguely "woodsy", as if they had been cooked on wood chips. Eating one, especially a very fresh one, was a complete piece of heaven.

A more accessible white bean treat can be picked up at my local supermarket. These are Kamome no Tamago (pictured above) which means "seagull egg". While the description claims that the outer shell is a "white chocolate" coating, it does not resemble chocolate much in taste or texture. It's not very sweet and relatively higher in fat.

A package of 6 of these eggs is about 600 yen and they are popular souvenirs sold on trains. if you can't find them elsewhere, they can be ordered through the manufacturer's web site. They're probably a better food souvenir for folks back home than most because they suit foreign palates but are still distinctively Japanese.

I never thought much about why Japanese sweets were supposedly healthier than American ones beyond the lower sugar content but that's before I thought a bit more about the effect of protein on blood sugar. If you consume any sweet, consuming it along with protein will help decrease the chance of a strong spike in blood sugar. And since traditional sweets contain beans which are high in protein, they are less likely to send you into a sugar high then a blood sugar crash and less likely to contribute to insulin resistance (which can lead to Type 2 diabetes).

Sumo Cups

About a decade or so ago, my husband and I were rabid sumo fans. Our interest started near the end of the career of the incredible grand champion Chiyonofuji and continued up until around the point in time when the first American grand champion, Akebono, retired. Most foreign residents of Japan have limited interest in sumo and it's somewhat easy to understand why. The "sport" or "skill" as it's probably more aptly translated to, is very complicated under the surface but appears to be two fat guys shoving each other for a few seconds at first glance.

The way sumo wrestlers train is by living at and training in a "stable" (or "heya" in Japanese). Each stable has a different name and is ran by a master, usually a retired high level wrestler, along with several other managers who are also retired wrestlers though likely those who never reached the upper ranks. The rule is that no wrestler has to wrestle someone in his own stable. This makes sense in that it reduces the chance of a wrestler taking a dive to a stable-mate. Unfortunately, at one point one stable, Futagoyama, had about 8 wrestlers in the upper ranks. This meant that their wrestlers were exempt from fighting some of the toughest people because they happened to belong to the same stable. The problem with this is that the competition was so poorly balanced that this group of wrestlers were staying at the top in part because they had all made it to the top. This made sumo far less interesting to watch and was the point at which my husband and I lost interest.

The cups pictured above were used to serve beer at the Kokugikan in Tokyo. The Kokugikan is the main stadium for tournaments and all official Tokyo championships are held there. The Kokugikan is situated in Ryogoku which also happens to host a lot of sumo stables. However, there are stables in other areas including where my husband and I live. We occasionally see a wrestler walking around or at the train station. While seeing a wrestler is interesting, the thing most people notice is that you smell them. Their topknots are created using chammomile oil and they have a pleasant semi-floral, semi-talcum powder smell about them.

Anyway, my husband and I collected those cups during the height of our interest in sumo and the wrestlers shown on them are some of the ones we enjoyed watching the most. On the bottom row, the second, third and fourth from the left are all Americans - Musashimaru, Akebono, and Konishiki.