More Chocolate

When I visited Ropossa before Valentine's Day, a girl working there said that she would be handing out chocolate on Friday and Saturday. Since I work on Fridays and Saturdays, I cannot come here then, I said. She said she would put one chocolate gift away for me.

When I stopped by Ropossa to have dinner recently, she gave me a Valentine's Day gift that had a name tag with what was reasonably close to my name in Japanese on it. There were some extra lines there that the other Japanese guests thought were funny, and they kept making fun of her the whole evening (for not being able to write Japanese).

I was also given a bottle of sugar, for unclear reasons.

Giri-choko from our secretary

In Japan, they have the concept of "giri choko" ("duty chocolate", 義理チョコ). This means that women have to give chocolate our cookies (home baked) to all their colleagues on Valentine's Day. Men do nothing in particular on Valentine's Day, thought there is the concept of "gyaku choko" (逆チョコ, reverse/opposite chocolate), which means that a man gives chocolate to a woman (the opposite of normal behavior in Japan).

Since I work at a university, there are very few women around. Since I work at the computer science department, there are in fact very very few women around. There is rumored to be a female professor somewhere, but she works so much I have only seen her once in the 9 years I worked here. And I even worked on the same floor as her for 3 years... There are a few secretaries, but they are located in a different building, so they do not give any chocolate to me. We do have our own secretary, though, and she provided some chocolate for us this year. Very nice.

Early Valentine

In Japan, all women are expected to give chocolate to 1) people the find attractive and want to date, 2) anyone they are dating, 3) anyone who works at the same place as they do and who is male, 4) anyone they know who is male, 4) their friends (this is optional).

Everyone in Japan tells me they get huge amounts of chocolate at Valentine day every year, but I never get anything. This year, someone already gave me a Valentine chocolate gift. It was so big that with only this one gift, I think this is the year with the most Valentine's gifts so far for me! A great start.

Of course, on "White day" (March 14), you have to give back something that is at least three times more valuable to anyone you got chocolate from, so receiving lots of things is not only positive. My good looking friends complain to me that they have to spend several weeks travelling around with a huge truck full of chocolate just to return the favor to everyone they got chocolate from a month before...  A problem I have never had to deal with.

Sad and lonely Valentine's Day (again)

Possibly partly my chocolate

In Japan, Valentine's Day is huge. It is also a bit backwards compared to Western countries. Women are obliged to give chocolate to all male co-workers. This is called "giri-choco", from "duty" (giri) and "chocolate", since they are duty bound to distribute this chocolate. Home made cookies are also OK.

Women can also give chocolate to men they are interested in, to indicate that "I like you".

If you receive chocolate, you are obliged to return the favor on "White Day", March 14. You are also supposed to return a gift at least three times as expensive as what you got. For giri-choco you have a giri to return the gift. For "I like you" chocolate, returning something means "I like you too", I am told.

The Valentine exhibits in stores around town are bigger than the Christmas exhibits in December, so this is a huge thing. Every year, and this year was no exception, well meaning Japanese try to explain this culture to me. They also always tell me: "As a foreigner, you will get huge amounts of chocolate from all the women around you, since Japanese women are fascinated with foreigners".

Every year, I end up getting very little or no chocolate at all. This year was the worst so far, with no chocolate at all received. There was a small plate of chocolate on the desk of one of my colleagues, and when he was not there, the rest of us figured "this is probably for everyone, right?" and dug in. So I did have some chocolate but it was more like "stealing" than "receiving a gift".

Not my chocolate

One of my magician friends had lots of customers dropping by our magic bar just to give him chocolate. He got too much, so he let me eat some of his chocolate.

More giri-chodolate

Giri-chocolate from our secretary

Our secretary  gave me "giri choco" ("duty chocolate") this year too. Women are expected to give men chocolate on Valentine's Day. They should give chocolate to any man they like, but they should also give chocolate to all the men they work with. This type of chocolate is called giri-choco, to set it apart from chocolate you give to people that you actually like. I usually do not receive giri-chocolate either, since apparently no one thinks they are duty bound to give me chocolate. Either I don't count as a man, or I don't count as a human being, perhaps.

Our secretary thinks I help her a lot with difficult English and whatnot at work, so she gave me chocolate last year. She gave me some chocolate this year too, and she said: "Since I am about twice your age, I guess I do not have to tell you that this is giri-choco". But it was perhaps good that she did clarify that, since the seal stuck on the wrapping was very romantic: "You mean the world to me", "Your love brings meaning to my life", "Kiss me!", "Be mine!", "You are everything to me", "Hug me!", and "I will love you forever" sound less like "I am obliged to give chocolate" and more like "I like you chocolate"...

Presumably the shop she bought the chocolate in sticks these on every box, which considering most chocolate passed around is giri-chocolate to people you do not really like that much might not be a great idea. But as my Japanese friends tell me, since it is English no one reads it anyway. And if you do read it, no one understands what it says...

Valentine giri chocolate!

On Friday nights we have a girl working in our magic bar. She does not do magic (though she did do some magic one time a long time ago when her colleagues from her day job stopped by) but she makes drinks and does the dishes.

In Japan, women are expected to give chocolate or home baked cakes or cookies to all the men that they work with. It is a Valentine's day thing. In Japan, women are supposed to give chocolate to men that they like as a sign that they like them. They also have to give "giri-choco" ("giri" means duty or something you have to do) to all their male colleagues, especially anyone above them in the hierarchy.

I usually never get any chocolate for Valentine's (despite this being my 8th Valentine's Day in Japan), but every year many Japanese people come up to me and tell me I will receive huge amounts of chocolate because all foreigners are so popular with the ladies in Japan. Apparently all foreigners except me. I also do not get this "giri-choco", in large part because there are no women at my place of work. My previous boss for some reason always gets huge amounts of "giri-choco", so there must be women around here somewhere, though.

Last year, our secretary did give me giri-choco after I had helped her with a lot of English language work that needed to be done (explaining strange Japanese rules to important foreign visiting professors etc.). This year, the girl in our magic bar already (almost a week before Valentine's Day) gave me a chocolate cheese cake tart. Which was "giri-choco" (not "I like you choco"), and delicious.

White Day

March 14 is not Pi-day (3.14) in Japan, it is White day. White day is the day when men have to return the favor and give chocolate (or something like that) to all the women that gave them chocolate on Valentine's Day. Apparently, if you are in the wrong business, this can be quite expensive. One of my acquaintances works as a sales person going around to various dentist offices, and he has to give chocolate to all the female staff of all the places he visits on White day, which costs him many thousands of yens.

I am lucky in the sense that no one likes me enough to give me chocolate, I guess, and I have no friends that do it either. I did however get "duty chocolate" from our secretary this year, so I went out looking for some funny chocolate to give her and some other people that gave me duty chocolate.

I found a series of animal shaped chocolate. I gave our secretary a hedgehog shaped chocolate (that she later told me she thought looked "scary", which was probably not a good thing; hedgehog is "spiky rat" in Japanese, so it is a rat too, she said). I also bought a pack with three little pigs, but I was unsure on if it is OK to give girls something that is connected to pigs (pigs are considered fat and ugly in Japan) so I did not dare to give that to the owner of our magic bar's girlfriend...

More chocolate

On Saturday I ran into a girl who did not give me any chocolate on Valentine's Day, but she did have some with her on Saturday.

A fairly chocolate-less Valentine (again)

Hot cocoa with apples, instead of soup.

Today was Valentine's Day, quite a big thing in Japan. Women are supposed to give chocolate to men they like, giri-chocolate (duty chocolate) to men they work with or who have helped them in some way (or they are just generally duty bound to give chocolate to), and there are some other rules too.

Everyone tells me every year that I will get huge amounts of chocolate because I am a man, and all men get lots of chocolate. A 7 year old kid told me he got chocolate from his mom, his sisters, quite a few class mates, etc., totaling around 10 people. A bartender I spoke to today mentioned getting chocolate from 60 or so women... People tell me I should expect more than Japanese men, because I am a foreigner and Japanese women love foreigners. And I have a job where we have quite a few women in our work place.

Still, since I got 0 pieces of chocolate every one of my 6 previous Valentine's Days in Japan, I was not expecting much. But this year our new secretary gave me three pieces of chocolate as thanks for helping her taking care of and explaining difficult secretary related things (in English) to lots of our foreign guests during the year.

Other than that, there was not much chocolate in sight. I got a cup of hot cocoa with apple slices in it in the restaurant where I had dinner (today's soup was hot cocoa). That was it.

My business card can be read in the middle, the chocolate labels can be read in the mirrors.

I also had a bunch of "gyaku-choco", "reverse chocolate" or chocolate that a man can give to a woman even though it is Valentine's Day, but no women showed up that were interested in getting chocolate from me. I gave one chocolate bar to our secretary, though. She seemed happy enough, though she did say "Ah, this brand is very cheap!"...

My first giri-choco

Today our secretary had placed a pack of chocolate filled with ume-shu (plum wine) on my keyboard. There was also a thank you note for helping her with explaining difficult things in English to our foreign guests at various times and other things like that.

Despite having been working in Japan seven Valentine's Days so far, this was the first time I received "giri-choco" (duty chocolate, chocolate that women have to give to everyone they work with or who has helped them out in some way, or they are just generally duty bound to give things too etc.). I was beginning to think that the whole concept of giri-choco was just an elaborate hoax (involving everyone I have ever met in Japan, all the convenience stores, all the department stores, etc.) that had been going on for seven years to make me feel sad that I never get any chocolate, haha.

I gave her a pack of reverse chocolate today since she has been very helpful with all the insane paper work people force me to do here.