my mom is back from her little kangen water trip to japan. she and other kangen ladies went for about 10 days to attend a seminar and visit the factory. very exciting indeed, not! the highlight of anyone visiting japan is of courses the presents they return with, or 'omiyage' in japanese. it's the same word for gift if you were to visit someone's home--yes, japanese custom dictates that you bring a present when you visit someone's home. in my experience, americans think japanese must be rich because they see all the japanese companies that exist. regular (middle-class) japanese live no more comfortably than any other regular folk in western society. actually, japanese may have even less material goods because their homes are smaller. in my opinion though, japanese are poor due to all the damn gift-giving! ^_^

omiyage: buck-tick cd, hello kitty treat, okinawan brown sugar candy, violin pin

i usually request my omiyage to be a cd or magazine related to buck-tick. of course, this time was no different. my list was much shorter this time, only 1 item so as not to confuse my mother or appear too greedy. my mother's shopping for my gift was different this time as well. she couldn't find the cd at a store and had a shopping list for herself, so she bought everything from amazon japan and brought it back on the plane with her! if she wasn't going to get me the cd, i was going to buy it from amazon japan and have it shipped to america anyway. how funny. she also brought back my brother, which wasn't quite the omiyage i was hoping for! hahahahaaa. he's only here for 1 week. actually, she did bring back a few other small things such as a little sweet red bean cake thing in the shape of hello kitty. yeah, i could've made my entry title much dirtier but i just felt like keeping this one family-safe. (if you don't get that one, let your associative imagination run wild for a moment. another word for kitty. something about tasting good. yeah, you get it now!)