Why all the food?

The significance food carries must heavily be influenced by the country's history. I've definitely noticed that food here carries more meaning than in the States.

I might have commented on this before, but people here send fresh vegetables, seafood, and anything else that's edible through the mail to their friends and relatives. For instance, my relative who lives in Kyushuu, sends my mom a box of potatoes and other vegetables from time to time. I look at that, and although I think it's really nice of my aunt to send them, a part of me wonders what the point is. I mean, you can BUY vegetables at the local grocery store. Why do people send food back and forth, when you can buy the same thing at a store? It seems odd.

Another custom over here is, when you go visit someone at their home, you're supposed to bring some sort of food as a gift. There must be some kind of rule about the whole thing, but for someone ignorant like me, it seems like we're just bringing food back and forth to each others homes. I keep forgetting about this food exchange practice, so people here probably think I'm so rude! Maybe this food exchange thing is to keep people from visiting each other. Maybe people think "oh, I haven't bought any food to take over, so I can't go visit so and so."

Food is almost like money here I think. Exchanging food as a gift is involved with everything that goes on. During the summer, people give food gift boxes as a "summer greeting." In the winter, they give "winter greeting" packages of food. I'm pretty sure there are other times that you give and receive food as a gift, but since I'm not accustomed to it, it feels like people are randomly giving me food left and right, all year round. I can't figure out the WHY of it, so when it happens, my eyes get big andI think to myself "ok, let me think, what's this for again? What am I supposed to do? Give something in return? Just say thank you? Uh oh, what am I supposed to do?"

Since food is so important here and it's used as a gift all year round, stores sell a lot of VERY neatly packaged food. YOU WOULD BE AMAZED. You'd think stores were selling gold from the looks of the packaging. Oh yeah, train stations always sell a variety of food gift packages, because god forbid, you'd show up at someone's house without a gift!

One of these days, I'll write about fruit in Japan.