Valentine's Day and White Day

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Jamie

Japan has a wonderful cultural twist on how to celebrate Valentine’s Day. February 14th is not for women. It’s for MEN! On Valentine’s Day, women will give men chocolate. Isn’t that fantastic!? As an English teacher, many students and co-workers gave me chocolates, flowers and little cakes on Valentine’s Day. TV dramas about high school often have a Valentine’s Day episode, such as boys competing to see who will get the most chocolates.

Don’t worry girls; you’ll get some chocolate too! On March 14th, Japan celebrates “White Day. White Day is for men to return gifts to the women who had given them chocolates a month earlier. This is why it is very important to remember who gave you chocolates on Valentine’s Day. I’ve read on some websites explaining this holiday that the gift should be three times the value of the gift they received. This is called ‘sanbai-gaeshiin’ Japanese. I am not sure who strictly this rule is followed and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter for us gaijins.

I have made some interesting observations about relationships in Japan, specifically body language and expression emotions. You can easily see young couples holding hands as they walk through a shotengai (shopping street). However, older married couples do not walk hand in hand around town. When one of my students showed my parents around town (going to temples and gardens), she commented that it was so nice to see them holding hands. She felt they must really love each other. While Japanese couples obviously love each other, I believe my student was really saying ‘its must be nice to openly show your feelings in public’, which is something that is not common in Japan.

Kissing, however, is rarely seen in public. More over, whenever I’ve asked my students “have you seen your parents kiss?” they’ve always say “no, never!” The topic came up because I was explaining what Mistletoe is for Christmas. Children were shocked and almost appalled at notion of kissing someone, much less the mental image of their parents kissing under a plastic green thing over the door.

The “hug” is extremely meaningful in Japan. I’ve noticed it mostly on TV dramas, but when a boy hugs a girl, or vice versa, it essentially means “I like you” or “I love you”. Even when it’s just a hug to console someone, if another jealous man sees it, he’ll think it was a declaration of his love.

Lastly, the words “anata ga suki” means ‘I like you’ and sometimes ‘I love you’. It can be difficult to know if he or she means love, and things could get complicated! Language barriers are the most difficult and frustrating part about cross-culture dating.