In old movies and TV shows, a student or maybe even a group of students present the teacher with an apple. This is displayed as either something traditional or as a mark of respect. I could spend a lot of time sitting here at this keyboard debunking the whole thing–outside of Little House on the Prairie, when was this ever really a thing?–but I won’t waste your time.
I have never been given an apple by a student. I have been given persimmons, mandarin oranges and even a coconut (once) but no apples. My company has bought me and my colleagues apples (several times this week) but were here to talk about students. To be fair, students have given me much better gifts than apples, but this isn’t a competition.
Today, while I was substituting a class for the second time this week, one of the students offered me a small package with the unusual name of Binch. I had no idea what this could be, but received it warmly and patiently waited for an explanation. What I was told is that it was chocolate. The student seemed to be quite excited for me to try these cookies and managed that this was one of her all–time favourites. It tuned out to be rather delicio
us. It was dark chocolate on a cookie. It reminded me of Alfort (rough sounding translation from Katakana) cookies in Japan.
While I could put down briefly speaking to one of my bus crushes today, I think receiving the cookie deserves to be declared Today’s Perfect Moment.
Having not seen these in my Japan life and curiosity piqued, I naturally looked ’em up. A source in case you get a hankering: https://oyatsucafe.com/products/alfort-chocolate-biscuits?variant=17307832129
Also available on Amazon (natch).
I can buy them at J-town, a somewhat local Japanese store. In fact, I think I can buy them at the Chinese/etc. store across the street. The combination of dark chocolate and substantial biscuit is pretty awesome.
Thanks for getting a source for me, by the way. Of course, I would need it to be on Amazon Canada.