Monday 6 September 2010

A Matter of Thanks....

A few weeks ago my husbands co-worked had a baby and so I made a Jake the Dog as a gift, then last week hubby comes home with a gift for me (from the co-workers family) it was of course, all wrapped up and in a presentation box, inside was this catalogue. I get to flick through and order any one thing as a thank you gift. I picked out a black pepper grinder since mine has never been the same after I dropped it in a load of batter. The catalogue idea is relatively new, before the person doing the thanking would choose something such a towel set, small bowels bowls, fancy cookies or the such like, I suppose with the catalogue you can pick something you actually want/need but I suspect that the thank you gift often costs more than the gift you give! I think, the return gift is supposed to cost one third of the original gift, as a rough guide. When you attend a wedding there is a complicated procedure to give money and then you get a thank you present back, often something you don't want/need, silly but it is tradition.

The other thank you fiasco was for my Japanese friend Tomoe who always sends us a big box of nashi in the summer. When we stayed with her she had mentioned that she likes the honey ume-boshi that is produced in Wakayama (my husbands hometown, she had been there visiting). So, as a thank you gift we thought we could send some ume-boshi. Hubby calls his mom to see if his uncle (ume-boshi farm owner) does the honey ones and if so did they have a website we could order some from. Long story short, his uncle sends the ume-boshi for us and asks for no payment. Great! But now we have to pick a thank you gift for uncle. You see, gift giving really isn't such a straight forward thing in Japan.

8 comments:

  1. Im glad you didnt get any small bowels!!

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  2. That was me Jo, I forgot to sign in.
    Kate xx

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  3. When my Japanese best friend got married, the gift giving was just absurd. And I think her thank you gifts were actually pricier than the gifts she got! She didn't want to shame her family by giving cheap gifts.

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  4. i love the catalog idea, at least you get what you want! for one wedding that yoshi went to, i got a set of five pyrex mixing bowls!

    recently, though, we got one for a funeral that he went to. first time for that, usually we get soaps and/or towels. from the catalog we got a yakiniku set, soooo not a funeral thing but the beef and pork were excellent! lol

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  5. eeewwww yaki niku from a funeral :o(

    I nearly wrote yaki neko, that would have been even worse

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  6. Gee wizz, its so complicated. I always think the whole unexpected Christmas gift is awkward I am a bit of an over-giver.....it sounds too complex for me.
    We are doing a swap - will we have to send thankyou swaps afterwards ??? and then thank each other again ??? YIKES !!!

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  7. hahaha Jodie, we might be swapping forever....

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