Not Quite "Omiyage".....

The Monday before I left on my short trip back to Canada, I mentioned to Minako, the manager of the cafe where I was having lunch that day, my intentions.  She quickly asked me if I could bring back some maple syrup...and then back-tracked a bit by musing that it might be expensive.  I mentioned I had purchased a couple of 500ml bottles of the maple syrup for about ¥1000 each on my previous trip.  "Oh!  Then can you get some for me?", she asked.  "I'll pay you back", she added as some kind of assurance.  A week after my return, she had in her hands a bottle of President's Choice brand maple syrup which ended up display on the cafe's counter.

On my previous trip I had brought back similar bottles of maple syrup.  When my mother and I went shopping for it this time, I didn't have any luck finding it.  As it turned out, the bottles were on the bottom shelf of that particular section at the Shopper's Drug Mart store I was shopping in.  My mother asked a store clerk about the product and he pointed out its location to us.

Later on we were at Walmart.  The prices were lower but the packaging wasn't as attractive.  Sure, it was a couple of dollars cheaper but the aesthetics of a bottle with a stopper are a lot better than that of a tin can of maple syrup.  In my books, the humble can wasn't going to cut it for an item I was going to haul back to Japan from Canada.

"Omiyage", as mentioned in the title of this post, is the term for the gifts one buys for the folks back home when one goes on a trip.  (I pointed out in a class this week that the word "souvenir", unlike "omiyage", can refer to things one buys for oneself...though souvenirs can also be gifts for others.  Yes, my students thought that was a bit puzzling because no one had pointed out that distinction to them previously.)  Anyways, in this particular case, since I was reimbursed for the cost of the item then it ceased to be "omiyage".  It's now just maple syrup in a particular cafe's stockpile of ingredients...which I've been told tastes very good according to Setsuko, an acquaintance who also is a regular customer at the cafe, who was the first person to taste it.  (^.-)