cat /proc/claus | java

Finally, 4 years after being properly introduced to japanese pop-culture by coming to japan (well, one of those 4 years I spent in Brazil), I’ve received the fabled valentines-day chocolate.

First, some background: Valentine’s Day, in japan, unlike in other V-day celebrating countries like the U.S., is the day where the girls give guys chocolate. I can’t precise where or how this “tradition” began, but it has evolved considerably - certainly thanks in grand part to marketing from the food industry.

Anyway, in VD here in japan, girls are supposed to give chocolate tho men in their social circle, be them friends, or lovers, or even just job accquitances. Usually, it can be just a symbolic gesture - pick a 100 chocoes box for 100 yen, and hand them around - but usually the closer you are to someone, the more complex is the chocolate gifted.

I have heard stories (and seen it in some videogames), that to differentiate the “lover” from the “friend” chocolate, the girl writes “giri” (duty, or as a better, looser translation, consideration) in the chocolate - but I have never seen it live, even in the ubiquitous cheap choco stands in combinis. Maybe it is only part of the akiba subculture?

Anyway, enough of background - today Marilia prepared for me a chocolate fundue at her place, with enough fruits, bread and fundue to make me more than full. So not only I got my first VD japanese chocolate, but it was an authentic tezukuri-choco (hand made chocolate), which is supposed to be the toppest rank in the VDC (lots of acronims here) hierarchy.

Well, it was quite oishii! (even if we couldn’t quite control the fundue fire, and I burned my hand) - I even got double servings, by means of a box of choco mint thins that I brought with me back home.

And thus a 3-year tradition dies.

Now I have to prepare something for white day (the “response” to valentine day in japan) - oh s… !

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 1:55 am and is filed under Personal, Hahaha!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.