This post is brought to you by jet lag. It’s only the first night of my return from Japan, so hopefully I can work out my sleeping schedule by Monday when I return to work. After trying to stay up on the 12 hour plane ride from Toyko to Toronto, I crashed hard last night. Six hours later, I was wide awake and staring at the ceiling at 3:30am. Luckily for me, I have lots of baking blogs and TV shows to catch up on.

Plus the unpacking and sorting through the over six hundred photos I managed to take. But first, baking blogs and TV. 🙂

I will be doing a couple more indepth postings about my Japan trip once I sort out my life and my sleeping schedule, but below I posted a few photos highlights of my overall trip. Again, since I took over six hundred photos, this barely scratches the surface, but it will give you a general idea of my last three weeks in Japan.

One thing I love about Japan is the ritual of gift-giving. Japanese people take gift-giving very seriously and most of the little shops you will find in and around public transportation stations and tourist sites have purchases related just to this ritual. Food items, such as little individually wrapped cakes and biscuits will have a plastic display to show the contents of each box and this is such a cute way to know what you’re buying and be tempted to try something new.

Each city/area in Japan is also well-known for a particular gift-giving item (usually the shape or flavour of the dessert or a cartoon character that is featured on keychains, towels and other items). More often than not, this item is only available in said city/area. An example of this is that in Fukuoka, Japan, you can buy a special dessert shaped like a little bird. Growing up, I always remember my Grandma having these little birds as a dessert and now it makes sense since this is the area where one of her sisters and her family live in.

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B-r-a-i-n-s

I had a couple of outside influences when it came to making these brain cupcakes. One is that it is now thisclose to Halloween, although if you were to go the holiday sections of any store, Halloween began back in September. Another is that it’s Trevor’s favourite unofficial holiday. We always make a list of movies to watch leading up to the 31st, which always includes the Halloween series, Nightmare on Elm Street series and the Scream movies. Those are the ones I’ll sit through. On his own, I’m sure he watches many more. These cupcakes were to get us in the Halloween spirit.

You know, in between all the mini chocolate bars and Tootsie Pops we’re currently consuming.

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