This word means, basically something to the effect of congratulating you on your new house! This is pretty typical in Japan and I thought for those of you in the US, you all might not know about this and might find this bit of info on this custom interesting.
You know how in America we have something like a house warming party and we have food and people bring small gifts such as a coffee pot or something small like that? Well, it's sorta like that but they are a little more serious about this! Especially people from very traditional Japanese families like my husband's. They are quite big on the heavy tradition type stuff.
Anyway, since we moved here last week. My bil Jun and his fiance have been wanting to come see the house, walk through the entire thing which is pretty common. We chit chat about the house, walk through it together. They compliment each room and go on about how sugoi it all is. Then we head to the kitchen where I prepared some small snacks and drinks. We all gathered around the table, chewing the fat for about an hour.
Then right before they left and yup it's always given right before they leave. They pulled out the envelop and gave it to us. We then turn to them and thanked them about a couple hundred times and bowed our heads. Then they left. We all walked them out the door, and watch them get into his car, he has a little BMW sports car two seater car that James Bond drove in the last 007 movie (yes that is the same car my bil drives, lol) and then we waved until we couldn't even see the car anymore!
As soon as they left, we came into the house and checked the envelop (I'll admit it and I know other people check this right away too, hey at least I'm honest about it lol). And sure enough they left the equivalent of $1,000 US or 100,000 yen, which is juman yen. Not bad for us being polite for an hour and giving a tour of our house huh? And for what it's worth, about 6 or 7 of Noboru's coworkers wanna come see the house and bring gift money to us for shinchiku-iwai as well. Not to mention we will probably get some shinchiku-iwai when we go to Osaka as well.
Okay, I'll admit it, there are some things about Japan that are really fantastic!
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