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)