Wednesday, October 17, 2007

A Surprise From Japan!

Imagine our surprise when we saw a box under our mailbox from our friends who are living in Okinawa! Yes, a package from Kelly, David and Collin (David is in the Air Force and doing a tour in Japan) was a real treat. What was in it?

Japanese fans--the kids are having a blast playing with those, although Ben and Emma keep forgetting which way they open and try to pull them apart (so far they are quite sturdy...)

Chopsticks--two pair of long cooking chopsticks, which we don't have, and six beautiful wooden pairs for eating, which we love. We have lots of chopsticks, but none as pretty as these (or truly from Japan!)

Stoneware soup spoons--once upon a time Matt and I had blue and white ones, but I don't know where they are. These are a jade green and very pretty. We'll have to make some soup.

Origami--Kelly got packets of origami at a luncheon she went to and passed them along. Julia is especially fascinated--there are cranes and frogs that jump if you push down on the back (I've seen these but can't make them.) There are also cunning folded shirts, and rings that use two colors so the "stone" on top is a different color from the ring part.

Food: here's the interesting part, because since everything is written in Japanese, you don't know what you're getting! There are chocolate cereal O's, which the kids of course love, pineapple buttery cookies (Kelly had told us about these, from a vineyard that makes pineapple wine...) which are also very nice. There is bread in a can--yes, a can. It's a raisin bread with citrus peel, and you pop it out of a can. I can't wait to try it; we haven't opened it yet, but Kelly had blogged about it a while back and I thought it sounded good. Then we have the unidentifiable round things. They look like acorns without the little hats--but inside the packets are tiny dried fish, with eyes and all! Kelly thinks they're cookies--but WHY would they pack them with fish? We fed a few of the fish to Molly and Bo, who loved them. We're working up to the cookie part!

Anyway, it was so lovely to get a box full of unexpected presents. Thanks to Kelly, David and Collin! Maybe we'll send back a package full of Hershey bars and Doublemint gum....

1 comment:

Kelly said...

Yeah! It got to you guys quick! I'm glad you like it. I figured the kids would get a kick out of some of the different food.

I didn't know anything about the little fish in with the "cookies", we never opened any of them up! I will tell you that when you go to the grocery story, they have small bins in the fish section where you just scoop out as much tiny dried fish as you want! They sure don't sound like cookies, but I have no clue what they could be!

Glad you guys liked everything! It was fun trying to pick out things to send to give you a sense of "over here".