Valentine's Day in Japan

Do you know how Japanese celebrate Valentine's Day? Perhaps you may already have heard about their strange way of celebrating Valentine’s Day. In Japan, Valentine’s Day is known as a day when women (yes, women and only women) give chocolates to men!

Wait, so don’t women ever get anything from men? Don’t worry, we have another silly day called White Day on March 14th, where men give something to women in return ^_^ We Japanese people love gift exchanges, if you are in Japan you can take an advantage of Valentines Day to give someone a gift and show an appreciation for him/her! Giving chocolate on Valentine’s Day can be linked to as a romantic event, however it is not always the case.

Okay, there are two kinds of chocolate. One is 本命チョコ (honmei choco), and other is 義理チョコ (giri choco). When a girl gives a chocolate to her romantic partner or someone she fancies, that’s called honmei choco (a word “honmei” means dead certain). But if it’s not the case, it’s called 義理チョコ (“giri” means obligation).

According to it, 東ハト(Tohato, one of the companies that sell confectionary) had a survey and asked people what giri choco means to them. 54% of women said it’s a way of showing appreciation, 24％ said courtesy. On the other hand, 41% of men said courtesy and 22% said “probably a love”. Hm interesting, so it means chocolate gives guys hope that it will grow into something bigger? Which leads to the problem that chocolate giving can bring confusion and sometimes trouble. Girls don’t give guys chocolate and say, “This is giri choco by the way”. It’s kind of rude… So guys have to figure that out. At the same time, girls have to be careful too to avoid the confusion. They have to somehow make it clear that it’s not honmei choco without clearly stating it. You don’t want to be stalked by someone you are not interested in you know. This uncertainty sounds annoying but perhaps that’s the exciting part!?


So how did giri choco start? Well, no body really knows. But one thing that is known is that its sale boosted around 1986, when there was an economic bubble in Japan. The average cost of giri choco per person has been around 500 yen. According to ガールズトーク’s (Girl’s Talk) research, 60 percent of people spend less than 1000 yen for giri choco in total which means 250 to 500 yen for each.

However, nowadays kind of giri choco has evolved so many ways. There are 友チョコ (tomo choko: for friends), 世話チョコ (sewa choco: apparently it’s more significant than giri choco), パパチョコ (papa choco: for fathers), and even 自分チョコ (jibun choco: reward for yourself)!! えーーーっ, why do we have to come up with so many names?? Even I didn’t know such terms existed. Quite impressive…… Anyway, it is said that women are probably spending more than 1000 yen for giri choco because there are so many kinds now.

[ Sources from: TastyMiso ]