Wedding gift for Japanese friend

Welcome to Expat-blog, Oscar Japan

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Regards,
Sheetul

Wow good question !!!
it's true that in asia for wedding, people give money as present !!
in fact, the groom's family buy a home and bride's family buy all the stuff for new home...
when i attended the wedding of my friends in korea, i offered money... even people write down you name and the amount of money you gave...
i don't know about your spanish specialities !!! but why not wines or paintings or...
but i hope you can meet them before the ceremony to give your present cause they will be really busy and when you'll arrive in the wedding's hall, you'll see a table with few people receiving the money for the wedding !!!

good luck and have a nice trip there

Hola, Oscar Japan.
I am a married Japanese male.

Are you going to the wedding ceremony?  If so, I basically recommend you to bring money, too, because the ceremony is carried out by the money collected from the attendance.
As cincent wrote, you write down your name and the amount, so that they know how much they owe you.  They will bring the same amount at your wedding ceremony.
This is practically a collaboration system.

If you are still young, 10,000 or 20,000 yen is OK.  Even numbers (2, 4, 6) used to be considered unlucky in the wedding, because they can be separated, but people do not care any more.

Small gift is a good idea, it can be anything.

Oscar Japan wrote:

Hi everyone, I'm from Spain and I'm attending a good friend's wedding in Japan (I'm good friends with both the groom and the bride and they're both Japanese).

I've read that is common to give cash as a wedding gift but they've also told me that as a foreigner I should better bring something typical and unique from my country. What do you think would fit with this description and, at the same time, would be appropriate as a wedding gift? Maybe something like wine or related to art?

Thanks a lot everyone!

Hey Oscar,

I wrote a blog post all about this (and quite detailed too, so would rather include the link than type everything out here!)

How much to give at a Japanese wedding
survivingnjapan.com/2010/06/how-much-money-to-give-at-japanese.html

As for your other questions, I wouldn't bring a gift from your country unless you give it to the bride/groom separately. At the wedding, they will have no where to put your gift (they only keep a table of fancy gift envelopes) and you might make them feel bad that they cannot accomodate your gift, etc. It's a nice gesture, but I would give a cash gift (see above link for the appropriate amount) and then if you want to bring something from Spain, as I mentioned, do it separately, if possible.

Hope that helps!

Hi everyone, thanks a lot for your thoughtful advice!!! After reading your emails and some other Asian friends's suggestions i ended up bringing no money but a personal gift that I made myself (a photo mosaic with pictures of the bride and groom). I could meet them a day before the wedding, so I didn't bring it to the wedding (phew! as some of you noted, it would have been pretty embarrasing for both me and them, nobody brought an actual gift, just money).

Anyway, everything was great and it was an amazing experience. My first time in Asia!

Thanks again and please email me in case I can help anytime.

Best for everyone!