It is Saint Valentine’s day today.

In many western countries, the tradition is for people to give cards or gifts to their special ones. The Western Valentine’s day is relatively different from Japanese Valentine’s day. Obviously, the Japanese version is influenced by the Western version.

It is not common idea for a Japanese person to give a card or a bunch of flowers to another in Japan. Instead, a person almost always gives someone else chocolates.

In fact, the consumption of chocolates during this period is as much as one tenth of what is consumed during a year.

Why is that?

It is said that one of the influential Japanese sweat shop chains promoted the idea that Saint Valentine’s day was the day that a girl should give chocolates to a guy.

As a result of this, the sales of chocolates during this period was enormous.

At the same time, as most Japanese are fairly reserved, this was good opportunity for a girl to show her intentions towards a special guy.

When I was in school, some of the cool guys used to get several boxes of chocolates from some girls. I hardly ever got chocolates though!