Good morning. It’s まさきん.
Last time, I went over the benefits available for childbirth and childcare.
This time, it’s about picking a thank-you gift.
A catalog gift was on the shortlist at first
It was time to think about thank-you gifts for the people who’d given us baby gifts.
A catalog gift came to mind first. The recipient picks what they like, so it feels like a safe bet.
But the more I looked into it, the more my mind changed. We ended up passing this time, so let me walk through why.
The upside shrinks when you already know their taste
The main strength of a catalog gift is when you don’t know what the recipient likes.
For people we see regularly, we already have a decent idea of their taste. That’s exactly the situation where this strength doesn’t really apply.
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The handling fee adds up more than you’d think
Another thing that caught my eye was the price breakdown.
A catalog gift apparently includes a handling fee of around 800 to 1,000 yen.
For smaller gift amounts, that fixed cost eats up a bigger share. The lineup of items also seemed to thin out at the lower price tiers.
For older relatives, there’s a risk the deadline slips by
The redemption deadline was another reason we passed.
Catalog gifts often have a redemption window of around three to six months.
For older relatives, it seems easy to forget to redeem it in time. There’s a real chance it could just expire unused.
After going to the trouble of sending a gift, having it go to waste felt like something worth avoiding.
- If you already know the recipient’s taste, a catalog’s advantage shrinks
- The price includes a handling fee, which stings more on smaller amounts
- There’s a redemption deadline, with a real risk of forgetting to use it
How you wrap it depends on hand-delivery vs. shipping
Once we’d settled on an actual physical gift, I learned something new.
How the decorative wrapping paper (noshi) is applied depends on how you’re delivering it.
For hand delivery, it goes on the outside of the wrapping (“outer noshi”). For shipping, it goes on the inside, under the wrapping paper (“inner noshi”).
There also seem to be a few items best avoided. Green tea, knives, and combs tend to be avoided since they overlap with typical condolence-gift items. Returning cash as a thank-you gift is also considered bad etiquette.
Wrap-up
A catalog gift for a birth thank-you works best when you don’t know the recipient’s taste.
In our case, we already knew what they’d like. So we went with an actual physical gift instead.
How etiquette and typical amounts are viewed seems to vary by household and region. When you’re deciding, it’s worth factoring in your relationship with the recipient too.
Each time our family grows, it feels like one more small decision like this piles up. It might be a good moment to revisit bigger fixed costs at the same time, to make things easier down the road.
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