Hate Love, Love Sweets, Sweet Sweets

To continue my theme of trying to make up for lost blog time, I'm going to write one that I should have written on February 15th.

So Valentine's Day in Japan. Now, ordinarily my feelings towards contemporary Valentine's Day itself range from indifference to stupefied contempt. For years, I was preaching that this was a holiday who's purpose was to screw men over by an overstimulation of the economy and our women's joy meters - The whole day a superfluous attempt to convince us that there need be one specific day on which to show someone that we care lest we be put into the doghouse. Here, things are different.

On Valentine's Day in Japan, the tables are turned: It is in fact women who buy things for men. Usually it is something small, most often being chocolate. Also, it doesn't have to be confined to that special someone; women will sometimes give something small to a boss, coworker, or friend, just for the hell of it. Well, it's to foster improved relations vis-a-vis other people, I suppose. She's not compelled to give something to everyone male in the office, however; usually just a close friend or two will do.

Whatever the reason, I mind not. For on my day, I cashed in bigtime. It's not to say that my desk looked like a Laura Secord, but I did get a few little chocolates here and there from teachers, students, and even one mystery (Scandal @ school - who are you, mystery-chocolate-giver?!). Now, this gives rise to a puzzling internal dilemma. On the one hand, the slightly obligatory but nonetheless personally volitional nature of the chocolate causes me to side with my standing mindset on the issue, namely that it's a commercialized trap. However, the joy-joy feelings imbued from getting said chocolate tends to push those feelings aside. So brand me a hypocrite if you will, but I was quite happy with - for the first time - having the tables turned and being the one to reap benefits from yet another manifestation of the decline of Western Civilization (I wonder if this is how women feel on Valentine's day...).

One thing to note: This isn't the end of it. Oh no. In fact, in March, there's a day called White Day in which men are expected to repay those who gave them gifts on Valentine's. Three-fold, in fact. And THIS day was completely created out of the blue, purely for the expressed purpose of generating revenue. Nevertheless, most ladies who were generous a month prior find themselves in a Valentine's Day stupor when they're surprised with even better chocolate than what they gave.

So for men here, I guess there really is no such thing as a free lunch.