If you ask the person if he/she prefer cash or gift card, most would reply cash. But if your intent was to give something from a "hip store", you simply take the person there and go shopping. I take female friends to Buffalo Exchange, it's an used clothing store and if you go to the ones in the right area, you can find some really good stuff for pennies on the dollar. It's like a treasure hunt. Couple weeks ago I took a friend there and found 2 nice leather jacks for her for under $30. When you take a female friend shopping, you get to go inside the dressing room with her and critique about this and that, and how this top might looks better if she didn't have a shirt under it and... ;pWinston wrote: Isn't giving cash kind of tacky? Why not just get them a gift certificate at a hip store?
Or not participate in the gift exchange at all? lol
Gift exchange and other social activities (i.e. inviting your dentist over for dinner) are useful in building guanxi (關係) and improving the person's kimochi (気持ち) or ganqing (感情) toward you. East Asians view social relations as a reciprocal social network. The Japanese video game "Harvest Moon" (牧場物語) shows this in a basic and "video game" way, where the player character must invest time and effort in improving relations with others people and even farm animals (a happy cow is a productive cow). You can find English versions of Harvest Moon for the Wii and DS, I recommend playing it for the experience.
