Cupcakes are Overrated

The editorial staff here at B&P is in Tahoe this weekend sitting in hot tubs and generally losing our shirts, so we've asked our pal Mai to weigh in in our absence. Today's topic came up when in the wake of our MySpace deal getting done, attempts to lay claim to one of the eight fancy cupcakes they sent us nearly came to blows. Mai, a recent arrival on these shores, was perplexed by this American fanfare, and filed the following opinion piece. We've not edited her prose because it highlights her always unique perspective, and we hope for more reports from this intrepid young journalista.

It's been 7 months since I moved from Tokyo to San Francisco, and usually I don't feel like here is a "foreign" place somehow, but I have to point out some stuff that I don't get. It's not about scary Sushi with colorful toppings nor drinking at work on early afternoon on Fridays. One thing that I don't understand, and I've pretended like understanding is, cupcakes. People would know that food in Japan is awesome, and in fact Japan is a country of sticklers SWEETS as well, which is in our language, more like pronounced as SUIIITSU. If you go to any kinds of decent malls' food sections in Tokyo (called Depa-Chika, Department stores' basement), you see all kinds of beautiful cakes, puddings, cookies, chocolates... just awesome enough to look at them, and you feel kind of guilty eating them cause they are so well-decorated. Magazines talk about SWEETS, there are always new trends like what kind of SWEETS are in etc. It's a big thing for sure. If it's somebody's birthday, you get one of these beautiful arts and share the tasty-ness together. I have a friend of mine who went to buy a 5 star chef's big cheese cake and brought that with her bicycle by riding it for 40 minutes. She was serious.

Cup cakes never make me as excited as these. When we got tons of cup cakes recently at work from our client, people talked about it all day long longing for them. For me, it's just a sweet steamed bread with too sweet cream on the top. I wonder what's gonna happen when they experience our SUIIITS.