HYPER JAPAN 2012 Christmas

There are various kinds of super cute and gorgeous gift-wrapping styles for St. Valentine’s Day in Japan. To the Japanese, gift-wrapping, called ‘tsutsumu’ in Japanese, is one of the most important parts of gift-giving, and great care is taken in wrapping gifts, not only on St. Valentine’s Day, but also on occasions like birthdays, or even just when giving out cakes or sweets baked or made for pleasure.

How you wrap and tie the package is considered especially symbolic and carries a lot of expression about how you feel towards the person and the gesture of giving them a gift.

So today, as part of this week-long special feature on St. Valentine’s Day in Japan, we would like to show you a few examples of Japanese gift-wrapping for handmade sweets or choccies, which are widely used for St. Valentine’s Day in Japan.

• Paper bag wrapping

This is one of the typical gift-wrapping styles for handmade sweets, as well as ones with small plastic bags as you can see in our article about ‘Giri-Choco’ and ‘Tomo-Choco’.  All you need is wax-paper, paper bags, lace-paper and ribbons.  It’s very easy to create, and also looks very cute, so just give it a shot! (Meiji )

• Box wrapping

This style is usually used for ‘Honmei-Choco’.  As you can see in the image, its design is more elaborate and looks more gorgeous and attractive than ones for ‘Tomo-choco’.  Many shops in department stores sell this kind of pre-designed boxes around St. Valentine’s season (from the end of January until February 14th) in Japan.

• Deco-Wrapping
Literally, ‘Deco-Wrapping’ means ‘decorative wrapping’, and you can try it with any types of wrapping: small paper or plastic bags, and rectangle, square or heart shaped boxes, because ‘Deco-Wrapping’ is just adding decoration to them depending on your taste!  If you choose a box, it is normally supposed to be wrapped up with patterned paper, and tied up with glittery ribbons, and decorated with colourful bows or small artificial flowers.  Nowadays, Japanese ladies like to use cute beads and special materials for deco-wrapping also.  ‘Deco-Wrapping’ is now becoming popular more and more in Japan as people love to decorate any gadgets around them such as mobile phones, purses, accessory boxes, stationary and so on.  
You can find out more about it here 

WIN yourself some Valentine's Choccies with HYPER JAPAN & Tofu Cute

We've teamed up with super-kawaii online store Tofu Cute (you can also catch them at the event!) to run a week-long competition to win a packed of Valentine's chocolates every day! Today's delicious prize is the delicious set to the right. And it's so simple to win! All you need to do is Like the post linking to this article on our Facebook, or tweet this article, or write us a comment - and we'll pick someone at the end of each day. And if you  don't win today, you can try again tomorrow. Click here to check out Tofu Cute's extensive range of fun and fascinating Japanese sweets and snacks, along with Japanese kawaii-style accessories, stationery and gifts.
Thursday 16th February Prize Details:
Squishy Doughnut Mirror Keychain
Realistic looking chocolate doughnut with sprinkles, that opens into a handy pocket mirror
Glico Pocky Chocolate Biscuit Sticks
The classic famous crunchy biscuit stick, with a milk chocolate coating
Glico Collon Egg Roll with Chocolate Filling
Crispy and crumbly wafer biscuit rolls filled with smooth and creamy chocolate
 

Text: Honami Matsuura
Images: Yuna Kimura