Way past White Day, but still

I spent most of March travelling for work, and the rest of March travelling for fun, so I did not have time to return the White Day gifts I am expected to return after receiving Valentine's Day gifts. I returned some in early April instead.

The big Pocky sticks come individually wrapped.

And they are very big.

From one woman I got an enormous block of chocolate. I was thinking a lot about what to get her, and in the end I went for giant sized Pocky sticks. And since men are expected to return at least three times as much or as expensive stuff as they received, I bought three huge packs of Pocky sticks.

This is the "light snack" that comes for free with the drinks in this bar... not so light.

Another girl working in the same place also gave me a small Valentine's Day gift. I remembered that she likes the Choco Ball chocolate that is popular here, but I did not remember what flavor she prefers. So I got her one of each. They apparently also come with labyrinth puzzles on the box so you can pass time with them after finishing the chocolate too. She had misspelled my name in Japanese (written a non-existing letter) when she gave me chocolate, so I misspelled her name on the return gift too. She thought that was funny.

In Japan, random products come with something called Bell Marks. It can be found on some types of tea, some types of chocolate, some types of shampoo etc. The tea I usually drink at work has Bell Marks on the bottles. The Choco Ball chocolates also have Bell Marks. If elementary school children collect Bell Marks, these can be traded in for a new piano for the school or things like that, so I have been asked by an acquaintance to bring Bell Marks.

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...