Cheers!

Mid-summer (along with mid-winter) is the traditional gift-giving season here in Japan. Department stores set up special sales areas dedicated to summer gifts, which are often boxed sets of useful, if not terribly exciting, items such as laundry detergent, cooking oil or canned drinks. Most gift are given to business associates or others who you feel in some way formally indebted to. H and I don't really move in those kind of circles so we don't usually give any summer gifts and rarely receive any either.

Since moving though we have received gifts from the company who built our house for us. The other day, this parcel arrived:



And inside we found 21 cans of beer. Excellent. Summer is truly here....