Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Well, in Japan it’s Valentine’s Day, anyway. And let me tell you, in Japan the fourteenth of February is the Promised Land for anyone who likes sweets. Observe!:

 

What you’re seeing here are pictures of the eight or so Valentine’s Day treats I was given this year. And you’ll notice that a lot of these are bags of multiple cookies or chocolates, not just one. What makes this even more amazing is the fact that a lot of people here make sweets rather than just buying them, and they’re even more delicious than they look, if you can believe it.

Valentine’s Day is a little different in Japan than it is in most Western countries. The tradition is that the girls give sweets to the boys they like, and then on White Day (March 14) the boys return the favour by giving sweets to the girls they like.

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s a complete nightmare. I mean, one Valentine’s Day a year is bad enough. Can you imagine two?

It’s bearable for me because, as a teacher, I’m officially out of the kiddie dating pool, but I still get to benefit from the sugary goodness. Students here (at least at my school) make sweets for teachers they like, too, so I’ve been assaulted by mountains of baked goods all week. One of those pictures is even of sweets baked for me by a little nine-year-old girl I tutor once a week. It’s like Halloween in reverse, and I don’t even need to dress up or go door to door; the candy comes to me!

Of course, I got into the spirit of it, too, and bought some little chocolates to hand out. I gave some to my co-workers and a few students who came by the staff room. A group of three boys in the baseball club (i.e., abysmal students, but very friendly and easygoing) started jokingly pestering me for chocolate in the hallway. When I responded with “sure, come with me to the staff room!” they were all wide, gaping eyes and open jaws. I had a little bag of green, gold, and red-wrapped chocolates and dug one out for each of them.

“One more! One more!” one of the boys begged. “Please, please!”

Well, okay. I gave him one more, and then his friends started in, too. “One more! Please, one more!”

I was laughing by that point, and I gave of them another one. One kid, the same guy who initially started asking for seconds, cleverly noticed that he had one green-wrapped candy and one gold-wrapped candy, but no reds.

“Three colors! Three colors!” he cried. His friends chorused in with him.

“Okay, okay!” I gave them each a third candy. “BUT,” I added, “you’d better have something for me on White Day.”

“Okay, okay!”

“Promise?”

“Promise, promise!”

The repetition tactic is popular with the baseball boys at my school; they don’t know very many English words, so when they do know one, they’ll repeat it over and over for emphasis, usually while gesturing melodramatically and making exaggerated facial expressions.

They left the staff room shouting, “Yeah, yeah! I love you! We love teacher!”

Yeah. Sometimes you actually do have a pretty good Valentine’s Day.