How we wrap a gift

My daughter sent me a small box of assorted "wagashi" Japanese sweets from Kyoto on Mother's Day. When I opened the brown mail box, I found this pretty box of sweets. I could tell instantly from its outer wrapping paper this was from one of the prestigious old confectioneries in Kyoto called "Kame-sue-hiro". Three Chinese characters are used for "Kamesuehiro" and it consists of "turtle" "forever" "widespread" ---- all indicate good fortune.

A box wrapped in a white "Noshi" with a red line
Today a custom of Noshi is modified in a simple style.
In stead of attaching a dried abalone, modified red letters "noshi"on the right corner was designed.

This brown one is added by a confectionery to explain the history of this Japanese sweets.

In this small box, you certainly find an essence of each season.

This small box is arranged with "Chiyogami" paper of printed patterns and what's more it was wrapped with a white sash-like paper called "Noshi". This is a kind of formal manner for us to hand out someone a gift. The origin of this manner of attaching "Noshi" on a gift was dated way back in Japanese early history. At that time, a stretched, dried, thin sliced abalone wrapped in a white paper was attached on a gift because ancient people believed that abalone carried away bad evil. So it was a token of good fortune. This might be one of the reasons why we use so much attention to wrap a gift today.
Today when you buy a present at any department stores, they never fail to ask you if you 'd like to attach a paper of "Noshi" or not. Well, we prefer having them attach it when we certainly want it make very formal or when we just add a bit of Japanese way of etiquette.
I would say that wrapping is not only a matter of covering something or decorating but of adding good wishes from a sender to a receiver.

Here are some more images of gift-wrapping with "noshi".

(above five images are from Google)

information website of "Kamesuehiro"