Gift etiquette

  Etiquette for giving and receiving gifts in Japan has definitely enlightened us a little more on the ceremonial culture that we're in. You may remember when we first moved in how we brought gifts to the neighbors. This surprised us because in America it's usually the opposite that happens. There are a few other times when gifts are pretty mandatory.  Whenever you visit someones home, you should bring a gift.  When someone has a baby and you give a gift, the family will wait until the baby is a month old and then give small gifts to everyone who has wished their new baby well by giving a gift. We were very surprised when our neighbor (and new grandfather!), Yoshi, came to our door with a gift and told us this custom. Then we worried that his return gift was nicer than what we gave them originally!

The gift itself is almost less important that how the gift is wrapped and presented. To present a gift, you should always use two hands to show that the gift is worthy of being presented in a special way. You should always downplay how nice the gift is, by saying something like, "tsumaranai mon" which means this gift isn't much of anything. And you should never open gifts in front of the person who gave them to you.

There are also some don'ts in gift giving that we found kind of amusing. If you are visiting someone in the hospital you should bring flowers, but nothing with roots because that would symbolize the person growing roots in the hospital and staying there. Also, nothing should be mailed in a red envelope because those are reserved for funerals. White flowers are bad, because those are also used at funerals. Nothing should be given in the quantity of four or nine because those are considered unlucky, but gifts in pairs are considered lucky. Phew!

We've found - the hard way - that the Japanese are so kind and eager to not offend that we've been given a pass on the few etiquette rules that we've broken due to ignorance. We hope that when they're chuckling at our faux pas later that they know our intentions were good! I'm sure the teachers at Wilson's school wondered why I brought banana bread wrapped in one measly layer of saran wrap. And I'm pretty sure when we first met the neighbors I crudely handed them their chocolates with one hand. We're still learning and I'm sure we will be for our entire time here. Gift giving is just one of the many, many small customs and gestures of respect that the Japanese culture has.

To show you an example of how a nice gift would be wrapped here, I took pictures of the many layers of a gift we received from our babysitter (!) when she first came over.

Almost there!

Mmm, we finally made it to the Castella. This is a kind of cake that is a specialty of Nagasaki. Wilson, Leo and I really liked it!