I got A LOT of gifts. A LOT. In fact, I got so many that I became a re-gifter. I am both proud and not proud of this.
In the small town in Japan where I lived, I was the only teacher that taught all the students in the town. Every time a student went on a trip, I got a gift. It wasn’t just because I was popular – although I was – it was the custom. In Japan, you bring back a small souvenir or gift from a vacation or weekend getaway to give to family, close friends, bosses, or other important relationships like teachers. It’s not optional either. Giving these gifts is a social obligation.
These gifts are called omiyage (お土産). They are almost like an apology for being gone. Students use this gift to show teachers that even when they were not in school they were thinking about school. It was nice at first, but I got too many gifts.
The gifts could be small trinkets of places that they went. Often they were some kind of candy or treat. The most common treat was a kind of sweat bean called manjou. In Japan, gifts are usually beautifully wrapped. It is also the custom to never open a gift in front of the person who gave it to you. When I received this beautifully wrapped gift, I would say thank you and ask the students to tell me where they went and what they got. It was a good English lesson.
I got so many gifts that I never knew what to do with them all. Until one day I decided to re-gift them.
I often taught English classes at big and small companies in the evenings. I started to bring my new beautifully wrapped souvenir to the office manager or the class. I would explain in English to the class or in Japanese to the office manager where it was from. It was a good English lesson for my students or a great Japanese lesson for me.
But giving the gift turned out to be so much more than a good language lesson. It showed I knew and respected the gift-giving customs which foreigners like me were not really expected to know. Year after year I had one of the highest retention rates of any corporate teacher in my company. I came to believe it was in part due to the gifts I brought.
Knowing the custom helped me be a better teacher and a more profitable teacher for my company. Plus I didn’t have to eat all the sweet beans. Win- Win!