Omiyage - おみやげ

Omiyage is the tradition of giving souvenirs to friends, family, and coworkers when one goes on a trip. Omiyage can mean any kind of souvenir, but most of the time, it refers to tiny, nicely packaged sweets. These sweets refer to small mochi - pounded sweet rice - with sweet beans in the middle, buns with sweet potato or beans, or maybe ridiculously small portions of bread, cream puffs, or possibly yokan (sweet bean paste). Sometimes they're not sweet at all, things like dried fish, octopus, or squid.

Shops in tourist areas are dedicated solely to selling boxes of prepackaged delicacies - with maybe a wall of cell phone straps on the side. Aisles of boxes stacked on top of each other, usually with beautiful colors and kanji. On the top there's almost always a "preview" of what's inside these beautifully wrapped boxes of sweets. They show an open box so you can see how many omiyage are in a box and how and if they're packaged individually. There's a display of a whole omiyage, and if there's a secret inside, there's one cut in half so the filling can be viewed.

Boxes can hold anywhere from 6 to 30 Omiyage - and most can be relatively cheap to outrageously expensive. For 550 yen I bought a box of 20 cream puff omiyage, and a box of 12 manju with white bean paste filling for 650 yen to give to my fellow teachers. For such a small act, it really boosts your reputation in the work place.

Especially if you're a gaijin. (foreigner.)

Omiyage I've received:















Omiyage I gave: (from Tojimbo)

Trip Down Memory Lane

Silver week, one of the longer National Holidays in Japan is in the month of September. This year, it was from September 19th to the 23rd. I took this as a chance to go visit my host parents in Nagoya for the first time in two years. Here's how it went in basic detail:

I left Saturday morning and traveled to Nagoya by bus. It was a six hour drive, which is considerably longer than taking the Shinkansen, but more than 50% cheaper. Due to it being silver week, the traffic was pretty bad. But we made it to our destination just fine.

Nagoya was a lot of fun. Being with my old host parents wasn't weird at all. I met up with my host dad at the gate of the Meitetsu. The gate being a tall skinny manikin like woman, with her legs spread apart so you can walk through them. Doing so will supposedly bring you good luck.

I discovered that my Japanese isn't as bad as I thought it was, and I managed to have full conversations with my mom and dad, entirely in Japanese. Of course, I had to use some major hand motions and use words that weren't exactly right, but got the idea across. But still! Pretty cool! The host parents were pretty impressed and when they discovered that I was learning kanji, they were really excited and bought me workbooks. The books are for 1st graders learning their first kanji. Awesome - but very difficult. So now I've got homework I gotta focus on now.

We took a road trip to a bunch of places all over central Japan.

Our first destination was Tojimbo　とうじんぼう. It is a place on the coast with a lot of sheer rock faces. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful parts of the coast on the Japan Sea - and I believe it. The waves were crashing up against the walls with amazing power. Sometimes I forget what an amazing force nature is. (please click on the images for a better look...)



After that we went to Eiheiji 永平寺 . Eiheiji is one of the largest temples with 7 - 8 wings, all wood built. When we entered the temple, we had to take off our shoes and carry them with us until we exited. The temple is built on a hill, so there were a lot of steps that weren't exactly flat and kinda slippery. I thought that made if more unique and more of an adventure.



We spent a night in a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese house that was build around a hot spring. Mom and I went to the Onsen/hot spring. In Japan, before you enter an Onsen, you wash yourself and then enter the hot spring in the nude. Its all public. Most Onsen are split in half so men and women are separate. It was a new and interesting experience and not as awkward as I thought it would be. Of course, we were pretty lucky in the fact that we were the only ones there.

At the Ryokan we were treated to a very traditional dinner. We sat around a fire pit in a tatami matted room where the hosts roasted our food over a fire. We had everything from sashimi, whole fish on a stick, bamboo, expensive mushrooms, eggplant, shrimp, crab, and deer meat. I think the deer meat was my favorite... It was a lot of food and I felt so stuffed afterwards!



The next day we went to Gokayama 五箇山, a mountainous area with small traditional Japanese villages. All the houses were traditionally built with no nails. There were rice paddies and beautiful terraces. It was nice and peaceful compared to the crowded places of Eiheiji and Tojimbo.



We then went to a famous paper making area. I made some paper there at the experience houses. It was interesting to see how it worked in person. There was a lot of different kinds of paper on display there. I fell in love, it was all so beautiful. They had a lot of origami paper for really cheap so I got some along with a wall scroll pring. (They are now on my wall. Yay!)



We went back to Mihama after that, where my host parents live. The next day we went to the pottery district near the house and I bought some beautiful dishes there. Hopefully they'll make it back to America in one piece. I also went and visited my host school. Because it was holiday, not many people were there, but I met three of my old school mates, Sayako, Tao, and Hitomi. Sayako was one of my closest friends, and her English is still as hilarious as ever. Hitomi was more beautiful than I remember her, and I almost didn't recognize her!

I also got to hear the wadaiko drums again. Even though they were only doing basic practicing, it almost made me cry because I missed them so much. It was a great walk down memory lane.

I think that about covers most of the big stuff while I was there. Just a lot of fun, and I got to practice my Japanese a ton! So now I'm all pumped to talk to all my school teachers and ward members in Japanese.

Oh, and one side adventure that's just to amazing not to mention: on the bus ride there, the woman I sat next to actually spoke very good English. She lived in Alberta Canada for two years studying English at University. Turns out, she's a editor at a very large manga publishing company called Shogakukan. She saw my sketches and was pretty impressed at my skill. She really wants to meet up with me again and maybe she'll take me to her work so I can see what it's like! So cool! I'm not sure I'd want to become a manga-ka (professional manga artist), but it was great to make a new friend.

Anyways, life is good. Back to work. The jr high exams are next week so I only work two days at the school, and then the rest of the days at the office.


I'll try to update this more often, just with little tidbits of information or activities I do. Doing long posts just isn't going to work with my schedule!