14th February – 如月

バレンタインデー　- Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s day is celebrated around the world – Also in Japan! However, Japanese celebrate this day differently and have own culture.

First of all, Valentine’s day generally is about expressing love. This part is the same as the other countries, but for Japanese case, it is the day that girls confess love to the boys. This culture, from girls to boys has started around 1970s. On this day, Japanese girls give chocolate to boys to show their love.

This chocolate giving theme was obviously created by the merchandise firms – they made a catchy phrase something like saying ‘Giving the chocolate to confess your love!’

The reason why they targeted women to sell the chocolate was that around that time, women were the key customers for firms and they tend to buy those pretty stuff.

Now, because of Valentine’s chocolate sales have been successful, there are many different tastes, unique chocolates when the dates get close to 14th of February. During the time, they also sell the self chocolate making kit so that people can create their own special chocolate.

Not only for the boys they love, but also there are more different themed chocolates: Giving…

-義理チョコ (Giri-choco): for the people who take a good care for you, showing appreciation. Sometimes it can be given not because the appreciation but feeling pathetic – for the person who did not get the chocolate from girls…

友チョコ (Tomo-choco): for a good friends, appreciating them for being close to you, and hoping to be a close friends from now on too.

逆チョコ (Gyaku-choco): Gyaku means opposite, so boys giving chocolates to girls.

自分チョコ (Jibun-choco): Chocolate for oneself. giving the rewards to oneself for doing a hard work. This season there area many limited chocolate sold therefore they crave for the new chocolate to taste. people tend to spend the most for own chocolate.

It should also be mentioned that many Japanese girls who give chocolate to boys might be looking for the gift back on 14th March (White Day). So if you get Giri-choco from girls friends, they might just want to get gift from you…Be careful for those girls ahaha

In case if you do not know the history of Valentine’s day, here is the brief story – The origin of this celebration started from Italy. At that time, Roman emperor Claudius II abandoned the young couple to get married, as it can lose the fighting spirit and the young boys avoided to fight in the war because of the marriage. However, St. Valentinus thought it is pity not to let them together, so he secretly hold weddings for those couples. This fact was eventually revealed to the emperor and St. Valentinus were sentenced execution on 14th February. Therefore, this day became a day to praise St. Valentinus’s brave and sweet devotion for unconditional love.