Presents Galore!

In Japan, the fiscal year starts on April 1st. Since teachers are coming and going like mad at this time of year (on average, teachers here move to a different school every three to five years), the week leading up to April Fool's Day is a good time for people in the moving business.

It's also a good time to be a neighbor, since you get rewarded for helping people move. The people who are moving in or out usually provide drinks, at the very least, although most people wait until the moving trucks are either full or empty before they pass out the liquid refreshments. (Our newly ex-principal passed out energy drinks during the move!). And if you're lucky, you'll probably get some kind of snacks, too, usually in the form of yummy factory-baked goods.

But you never know what you're going to get. This year, for instance, the most unusual presents I got were a pair of chopsticks, two 1.0 kg boxes of laundry detergent, and a dozen eggs! And this year, like last year, I got several boxes of tissues, too.

What's more, the gift-giving doesn't stop until a few days after the moves are over, since it's also common for the new folks on the block to go around to their immediate neighbors and pass out presents. So during the last couple of days I've scored some more boxes of cookies, as well as a couple small hand towels, which are traditional gifts.

Even before the moving starts, however, the outgoing teachers usually pass out presents to their colleagues. Those presents tend to be more personal, such as the engraved pencil holders that the outgoing baseball coach gave to us players, or in the form of gift certificates. (This year, for example, the outgoing teachers collectively gave all of us two 500 yen coupons for the A-Coop grocery store chain, and the outgoing principal gave all of us two 500 yen coupons for the hotel/restaurant/onsen across the street from school.)

All this gift-giving associated with moving in and out is just another example of how polite and proper the Japanese people are. I hope I'm able to live up to their expectations when the time comes for me to move on.