For the main events of the year, this pastry shop creates limited edition pastries. Their main product is a chocolate croissant (“choco cro” in Japanese), and when Christmas comes they have a white chocolate version with a white sugar topping, or when the cherry blossom season starts they have a cherry flavored choco cro.

Now it’s the Little Girls festival (hinamatsuri) and soon it will be White Day (the Valentine’s Day for girls). So Chococro have two new pastries: the strawberry, matcha and chocolate choco cro in a pink wrapping and the white chocolate heart shaped choco cro in a dreamy blue wrapping!

Apparently Japan is the second biggest consumer of Beaujolais Nouveau wine after France. In my local alcohol store, they were promoting the Beaujolais Nouveau! It’s funny to see such a small traditional shop welcoming the Beaujolais!

In Japan, fashion is huge! But unlike in Europe where the trends are very defined by famous fashion designers, here it’s more “open”. So you’ll find various cuts for trousers (not just those silly skinny jeans), declined in all sorts of colors; shoes will be pointy, round, square, etc. and of course, you’ll also find… How to say… More original stuff 🙂 check this out:

Being pregnant in Japan, I have received loads of pamphlets, magazines and other information brochures about things to buy for babies. It’s been really informative to be honest, especially since I am far from home. The other day at the hospital, I picked up a magazine about “thank you gifts”. I found out that in Japan, people give money to new parents when their baby is born (which is nice) and in return, parents must give them a thank you gift worth 10% of the money they gave you! Japan is all about exactness, remember? I could not believe it though…
There are many types of gifts you can buy, ranging from cakes with the baby name written on it, to towels (Japanese people love towels) to kitchen dishes, etc. And we think Valentine’s Day is a marketing ploy!

So, here are some examples of cakes with the baby name written on:

Or if you can get crab and shark fin, if you prefer:

Or a set of tupperware:

It’s up to you really 🙂

The most incredible one for me is a bag of rice that weighs the exact weight of your child at birth and that’s swaddled in nice fabric! If I had to do such presents, I would go for that one!
Boy or girl version:

Little baby Sae who was born on the 25th of November 2013 and weighed 2973g 🙂

And now, for those who want to push things to the extreme…

Now imagine a second if we did this back home: in France, you’d give a 3kg Camembert as a thank you present… and in Ireland, a bag of spuds 😀 There’s a business idea!

In the past years, home coffee makers have become hugely popular, whether it is the Nespresso, the Senseo or other brands. Here in Japan, it’s the same. They are quite popular and all the cool kids own a fancy coffee maker (us too 🙂 )!
The other day, in an electronic shop and I came across an even fancier beverage maker, the green tea maker! Now that’s only for super extremely cool people! I am not there yet!