Giri-choco

Here it is, late March, and I’m still getting spam offering “Medicines Before Valentine [sic] Day!!!” The sender, “Ralph,” must be suffering from a serious calendar disconnect, or maybe he’s urging us to stock up on stud pills for next year, which I’d call serious planning ahead.

In Japan, Valentine’s Day has been successfully imported by merchants, especially chocolate sellers. The oddity (to Westerners) was that the strongest gift-giving custom was that women were supposed to give chocolates to men on that day, and not necessarily boyfriends, lovers or husbands, but also school- and even officemates. Occasionally, even in recent years, I’ll say to Yuriko on February 14, “Where’s my giri-choco?”

Giri being a prefix signifying social obligation and choco being chocolate (as in Choco-Pie! a Moon Pie sort of confection sold in Japan, an old favorite of mine). Yuriko, who knows about Valentine’s Day customs outside Japan, blows off this request, as I know she will. I do the giving: a pot of lovely lavender hydrangeas this year.

Once I read about a case in which some high school girls, short on funds to buy giri-choco, had been caught shoplifting sweets. So the devotion to the day can be intense. Men, on the other hand, seemed to have no special obligations on Valentine’s, but for all I know since I lived there, Viagra hucksters like Ralph might be making headway. Some efforts had been made to introduce in Japan a thing called “White Day” on March 14, a day on which men would buy women chocolates or other gifts. As far as I could tell, this succeeded as well as “Boss’s Day” or “Take Your CPA to Lunch Day” has here.