Friday, February 13, 2015

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment