(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

How adorable is this? The Japanese girl who was come over to study with the other lab for two months happened to notice the bottle of lotion I kept on my desk and the fact that I keep a Bath and Body Works bag on my bench (it's for transporting samples, but it was originally from a purchase), and she gave me bath crystals from Japan. We barely know each other, other than a few jokes when everyone in lab is goofing off and saying hi and bye each day she's been here. What a darling!

Comments

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Aww, that's really cool!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It is quite. Cute girl, shame she's going. Very lively.

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

See, they're not always packs of rabid schoolgirls waiting to ambush you at airports =)

Other than that, gift-giving is a very important mark of respect in Japanese culture, so they habitually try and give appropriate gifts to everyone they have been involved with everywhere they go when they leave.

They are also expected to bring home things for everyone they left behind to go somewhere else. There are worse things and it goes some way to explaining their consumerist culture.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That does sound like quite a burden. I was hard-pressed to remember gifts for everyone when I took my last long trip. I usually try to get something small for folk the first time, but I'm hopelessly forgetful, so that doesn't always work.

But yeah, okay, it's consumerism. It's still terribly cute.