Today is Valentine’s Day and depending on where you live, you will get your loves ones Valentine’s cards (US), flowers (Austria) or chocolates (Japan). Obviously, I prefer the Japanese type of gift to all the others, but then again: I will not receive one. That’s not because I’m single, mind you, no woman in Japan will receive any Valentine’s gift today.
That’s because in Japan, Valentine’s Day is an occasion for women to buy chocolate for men. And not the other way around. Also, it’s “men” in general, not just lovers or husbands. So, today many Japanese girls bring chocolates for their colleagues and bosses as well; and, given that many more men are in the workforce than women, especially in traditional companies, this can become very expensive.
Surely this is the reason why many supermarkets have had standard chocolate products for sale for weeks already, and mine even allocated extra space for a special display of Valentine’s chocolates – from cheap single pieces to very expensive family size boxes.
Anyway, I thought I could easily get over the fact that I won’t get any chocolates today, but then I found this: An exquisite “galaxy” chocolate box containing six planets of our solar system:
Isn’t that the perfect gift for any nerd? I’m seriously jealous! Not because I had to buy them myself, but because by the time it is White Day – March 14th – where men should reciprocate and buy chocolates for women, the only thing to be had then will be hearts and flowers and Hello Kitty shaped stuff, all in pink and cute and boring. Why would I want that?
Those chocolates look amazing… have you eaten them already? Did they taste as good as they look? ๐
May department has 50 employees of which only around 10 are men… they’d have drowned in chocolate and have to declare bankruptcy on March 14th ๐
Well, they tasted ok, and they all had different fillings. I guess you can’t have both really great looking and great tasting chocolates, so I didn’t expect too much anyway.
As for bankruptcy – in Japan the numbers are usually the opposite, so some Japanese officeladies get together and buy the chocolates as a group instead of individually. And as I said, there’s cheap chocolate to be had also. It’s not as if men would know the difference – unlike with beer or so ๐
I wonder what Uranus and Neptune are up to…? Maybe they visited Pluto, so it doesn’t feel lonely?
Seriously though, these look super-cool! I’m glad that you took care of the chocolate gifting yourself!