Well, looks like Valentine’s day came a little earlier this year and really caught a lot of us by surprise, the chocolate is mostly gone, and finding the right chocolate is imperative for a successful V-Day. But Japan celebrates Valentine’s Day a little different. They have two days of celebration: On February 14, the females present gifts to their significant other. On March 14th, the men return by favor on White Day, that way both sexes get the full “we’re out of most chocolate” taste.
According to St Valentine’s Day.Org, White day is believed to have started as a marketing tool by a Marshmallow Chocolate Company in the 1960 since over half of the chocolate sold in a year, is sold on Valentine’s Day they wanted to increase the sales and created a new holiday to make people buy extra chocolate.
On Valentine’s Day, if you’re a male, you can expect to get a whole bunch of giri-choco which means “Obligation Chocolate” women have to give out these types of chocolate to their bosses, colleagues, and other male friends. Since this is an obligatory chocolate, people don’t view it as romantic. You buy these on the corner store, gas station, or Wal-Mart.
Hon-Mei chocolate however, is the chocolate the means “I love you!” this chocolate is made by the women from scratch. I don’t think anything like this is ever going to catch on in the US unless we just suddenly switched roles, which can be quite funny to watch. At least that’s how it was in previous years.
On an interesting note, Koreans have a couple of extra holidays. For example, April 14th is the day where single people that didn’t get the “love” chocolate go out to drink and meet other single people. They actually go out and eat noodles with black bean sauce; sometimes a white sauce is mixed for those who did not celebrate White Day.
Then the month after that, on May 14th, they have The Rose Day where you give out roses to the people you fell in love with on April 14th. Really, from the looks of it, it looks like advertisement companies run the country left and right. Don’t quote me on this one, but it looks like every month on the 14th, you can expect to find some sort of sale.
