St. Valentine's Day

Wednesday, February fourteenth, two thousand and seven

In Japan, it's very common that young girls present some chocolates to their boyfriends and male acquaintances on February 14th, Saint Valentine's Day. When I was a office worker, I got a huge amount of chocolates.... No.... a few ones, actually. (ToT) Now that I'm a factory worker and there are no female co-workers in my factory, I didn't get any chocolates today. Only my wife gave me a small one. Those kinds of gifts are called "義理チョコ Giri-Choco", which means "chocolate out of courtesy" in English and which is given from kind of a sense of duty. Of course, if girls want to tell someone how much they love him, they present the guys "本命チョコ Honmei-Choko", which means "chocolate for someone special" in English.

This custom is started as a sales strategy of confectionery makers in Japan a long time ago. So, "Fujiya", a big confectionery maker in Japan, must be so sad now because they aren't able to sell any sweets due to the recent incident caused by their dishonesty. Japanese customers won't buy their products for a while even if they could restart selling the stuff soon. Speaking of "sell", our products, recycled chemical fibers, have been selling like hot cakes!


courtesy: 礼儀、作法