Gifts from Japan

My good friend that I used to work with was here visiting from Japan last weekend through today.

Unfortunately, I was out of town at quilt class for the majority of her visit. Boo-hoo...oh, the shopping that I must have missed! She's practically a professional shopper here in the U.S.

She did have time to go out to dinner last night with us, so we had a very nice visit for the evening, and ate some AWESOME Mexican food.

As you may imagine, Japan has some of the best food on the planet, but that being said...good Mexican is a bit tough to come by if you live there.

In typical Japanese style, my friend struggled to haul all the gifts she brought for us into our home.

For our son were packs of rice crackers. This was a huge hit. For my husband was a very impressive collection of Japanese junk food. He's a big fan, and I'll admit I never met a Pocky I didn't like.

And for me was the latest copy of Quilts Japan, complete with their calendar for 2008.

Best of all, my friend's mom is a quilter. She sent the quilt pictured above for me - isn't it lovely?! All hand done, and beautiful.

Her mom is also getting on in years and is trying to find a good home for her fabric collection. She wanted my friend to bring all of her quilting fabric over to me, but my friend could only find so much space in her luggage.

Even with limited space, she brought tons and tons of amazing fabrics, collected over many years, from Yuzawaya in Tokyo (you know this my favorite shop on the planet).

I was shocked with this generosity, but I suppose I should should have been more prepared for it considering how sweet my friend has always been to me. Japanese culture is truly a beautiful one. What a blessing to have friends such as these.