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...