A couple of weeks ago I had a friend from Japan come to stay. He is not Japanese, but works there. He has a Japanese wife and two very cool daughters. Indeed, my friend has lived in Japan almost half his life now!
The friend brought three gifts for me, which was very generous and made me very happy 🙂
Gift 1
It is a comic book (manga).
A few months ago I had a student who kept calling me “Great Teacher Jim”. I knew that this was a reference to Great Teacher Onizuka and assumed it was a compliment. Some people warned me that it’s not quite the compliment I thought it was, and my friend brought his English-language copy for me as a present.
Now I have read it, I realise Onizuka is…er…an interesting character. I can see that as the series progresses he really does become “Great Teacher Onizuka” but at the start that’s not who he is at all. I really like the comic book!
Gift 2
This is a popular German game called 6 Nimmt.
Indeed, the back of the packaging reads:
ドイツのNo.1カードゲーム
“doitsu no No.1 kaーdo geーmu”
Germany’s No.1 card game
I look forward to playing it (perhaps at a party for Japanese and English speakers that I am hosting later in the week).
Gift 3
The cover image of this entry has the front of the box and here is the back:
It is a type of mini chocolate cookie.
たけのこの里
(たけのこのさと)
“takenoko no sato”
Bamboo shoot village // Takenoko’s village // village of bamboo shoots
On the back that monkey is explaining:
おいしさのポイント
“oishisa no pointo”
points of taste // points of deliciousness
My parents and I ate the Takenoko’s Village snacks and they WERE delicious!
Annotranslate 
Did you ever get to the bottom of why the sweets were that shape? (I don’t read Japanese, of course.) Judging by the picture, could they be ‘bamboo shoot tips’? The mixture of rich milk chocolate with a faint taste of vanilla in the pastry was certainly a ‘delicacy’.
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