White Day

Today is White Day, a very unique Japanese holiday. The Japanese have taken Valentine`s Day and turned it completely around. Of course, they`ve kept the basic formula of candy and romance, but in the other direction. On Saint Valentine`s Day, girls buy chocolate for the men in their lives. It:s not all romance, though. In fact, women are supposed to give chocolate to almost all of the men in their lives. This brings us to giri choco, or obligation chocolate, which women buy for their bosses and male coworkers. Apparently, Saint Valentine`s Day was introduced to Japan in the late 50`s by a chocolate company that saw a good way to make money.

Feeling left out in the cold, other candy companies decided to create White Day, where men give gifts in return. Legend has it that White Day was created by a marshmallow company, hence the name, but nowadays if a man gives a woman marshmallows it means he doesn`t actually like here. Men are supposed to give women candy, or accessories, such as a nice purse, if they like her enough. In keeping with the tradition of making money, men are supposed to spend between one and a half times to ten times as much as the woman spent on them. The Japanese seem to be very big on rules and proscribed methods of behavior. It certainly makes it easy to decide what to do if there`s exactly one correct thing to do. I`m not sure, however, how everyone keeps track of exactly how much things cost so that they now how much to spend.

Of course, not all Japanese celebrate Saint Valentine`s Day and White Day exactly the same. In my office the women banded together to give a group gift to all the men in the office, and the men did likewise for White Day.