Is this a thing? Japanese Business Gift Question

May 21, 2019 11:00 AM

I work for a multinational corporation. Today I received a piece of mail from our Tokyo office containing a small Japanese fan and a mint-condition American ten dollar bill. No note, no name on the return address. It was addressed to me personally.

The person there with whom I work most closely is leaving the company soon after 15 years. This is the only thing I can think of - that it's some kind of goodbye gift? But why no card? Is this a customary thing or just some weirdness? I can call her to ask, but I thought I would check first to see if there is something cultural here at play that would be rude to openly question.

Thanks!

posted by something something to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

Point of information--are you based in the US? If you're outside the US that might make the Hamilton more like a collectible and less like a tip.

Hmm, do you share an interest in "Hamilton" with anyone in Tokyo?
posted by JimN2TAW at 11:44 AM on May 21, 2019

There's a very specific etiquette around formal gift-giving, and particularly gifts of money, in Japan, and sending it in a plain envelope with no card or other note, no ribbon tied around it, and the sender not even named doesn't really meet any of them.

If you have a very close and informal relationship with your coworker, she might not feel obligated to to follow everything to the letter, especially with a foreigner, but not even sending a note is even weirder than it would be in the US. Maybe it's just like a super-informal thing, and she happened to come across a ten dollar bill for some random reason, and figured, "well, I might as well send it to something something who lives where she can spend this," and like, forgot to include a note or meant to tell you separately or something.

Is there any kind of design on the fan?
posted by strangely stunted trees at 12:11 PM on May 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's entirely possible that the person wrote a note and forgot to put it in the envelope!
posted by praemunire at 12:14 PM on May 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

Response by poster: So, I was driving home last night and had a vague memory of a Japanese colleague emailing me a few weeks ago to say that someone in our office had organized an Uber for him to the airport but he didn’t know her name, so he was going to send a small gift for her to my attention. OH! Right. Mystery solved.
posted by something something at 8:14 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]