I’m sure every family in America has a secret recipe for Thanksgiving Turkey. Growing up in Hawaii, my mom taught me to baste the raw turkey in a thick layer of hot dog mustard, wrap it in foil, then pop it in the outside grill. Every so often, we’d peel open the foil and pour our secret ingredient over the turkey... a can of 7-Up. It sounds gross, but every year we do it, and every year we have the sweetest, most tender turkey you can imagine.

In Japan, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but on New Year’s Day every family eats a traditional clear soup for their first meal. It’s called o-zoni, and like Thanksgiving Turkey, every family has its own recipe, the only constant being that each serving must contain a piece of mochi (sweet rice cake) symbolizing wealth. My family, whose ancestors are from Hiroshima, uses clams to flavor our o-zoni; whereas my husband’s family, from Tokyo, uses chicken. I once went to a New Year’s Eve party in Hawaii, and the o-zoni there tasted strangely like beef stew.

Like the mochi which symbolizes wealth in o-zoni, symbolism is an important part of Japanese culture. Attached to gifts or cards are gaily colored paper cords called mizuhiki, looped into coils or woven into auspicious shapes like pine needles or pinecones. Mizuhiki means "drawing water" so they are not only decorative, but when attached to a gift it symbolizes purity. The gift cards from Kakukei Co., Ltd. feature elaborate, beautiful mizuhiki, which lend a festive, handmade touch to any gift. This company also produces notebooks bound with traditional Japanese bookbinding techniques, elegant in their simplicity. The paper products from Kakukei preserve traditional designs and will probably be around for many generations... just like my family’s 7-Up basted turkey.