I You Valentine Day Gift ! What do you like chocolates?

In which we discover that my students are charming.

I need to work a bit harder at teaching them English, though. The title of this post was uttered unto me by a timid kid who never speaks in my class, as she brandished a bag of homemade chocolates in front of her as an exorcist brandishes a cross. Valentine's Day in Japan is a bit different.

Here, girls are obligated to give boys chocolates- not just boys they like, or boys they're interested in. Nigh unto every male they know receives a bag or box. The female teachers in my desk-block pooled their money and bought all the guys chocolates. The vice-principal handed out boxes. The girl students each brought to school a voluminous sack, and from it produced box after box after box- almost every boy in their class, all their male teachers; every Y chromosome among us left school carrying our own body weight in chocolate.

I was not excluded from this ritual. My desk accrued candy on it's own- I'd leave for class and return to find a gold box sitting there with an incomprehensible note ("Valentine Chocolate Give You!") and ALL the girls spent yesterday in giggling fits. There are three kinds of chocolate on Valentine's Day in Japan- tomochoco ("friend chocolate"), girichoco ("Obligatory Chocolate", for your superiors) and honchoco ("Real Chocolate", for those you are unafraid to use the L-Word with), and each one has a different subclass of sweets dedicated to it. Tomochoco's realm is that of the brownie and the chocolate pastry- handmade or storebought, your friends won't care. Girichoco is usually well-wrapped foreign chocolate- they like anything with French or Italian on the wrapper. Honchoco had damn well better be handcrafted, home-made chocolate showing an excruciating attention to detail, and if it's got no love letter, it's a pale imitation.

In this flurry of feminine giving, there is a catch. On March 14th, one month later, men are required (all male chocolate is pretty much girichoco, as I see it) to make a return gift OF DOUBLE VALUE OF THE ORIGINAL GIFT on "White Day". These return gifts are also subject to qualifications.

Should the male wish to win the heart of his paramour, the creme de la creme of White Day Gifts is the gift of cookies. Yeah. Girls have to buy exotic and expensive ingredients, guys have to break out the Pilsbury. On the other hand, ponder, if you will, how many cookies these poor guys are going to have to make to reach the double value requirement.

The second class of White Day Gifts, indicating close friendship or high respect, is the gift of white chocolate or of sweet pastry. It's no cookie, but it's nice.

The lowest class of White Day Gift is the humble marshmallow, indicating nothing but a fulfillment of your societal duty. You could be a jerk and give nothing, but the marshmallows are safer, and no doubt cheaper in the long run.

All of this knowledge comes to me in the form of student response to my incredulous queries- "You mean your boyfriends never give you chocolates on Valentine's Day? No flowers? No jewelry? You! Ryoichi! You have NO IDEA how lucky you have it! Ii Naa!" and as such surprises me as much as it probably surprises you. For my part, I exerted some Western Cultural Pressure and passed out little chocolates to all the girls I know- I am, after all, here to teach my culture.

Now: QUESTION TIME! My "Valentine's Day You Gift" is to answer a few of the questions that I've more or less let slide for awhile- sorry, guys- I should be keeping on top of this.

How do you wash chopsticks? Is it by hand, or do they have dishwasher inserts? -Galby
I don't have a dishwasher- I wash them all by hand. I can assure you it takes less than three seconds to make a chopstick immaculate- they have no curves, angles, bends or nooks in which dirt can hide. If you're REALLY all up on washing them in your dishwasher, here's my recommendation: Go to the hardware store. Buy some aluminum mesh- the aluminum won't rust like steel would. Cut it to fit the bottom of one of your silverware tray compartments. Water will flow through, but chopsticks won't. Caveat (and I only say this because Galby, our fair questioner, is a man after my own heart- he wouldn't think to do this any more than I would): run the dishwasher a few times with nothing in it to get any treatment they've got off the metal.

So you're saying the rigid social structure in the workplace breaks down at after-work activities? - Rusty
Absolutely. The Japanese believe strongly (and I can make this generalization because they really do) in separating work and play into compartments which never, ever touch each other. If you and your boss get together after work and go out for drinks, neither one of you "remembers" the other's unprofessional behavior in the morning. So do whatever you want. Make a pass at the waitress. Sing bad karaoke. Go to a public bath and stand before him as G-d made you. You will both pretend it never happened until you leave work again- it's like everyone here lives as two people. The young folks don't stick to the rule quite as much- when in the company of other young people, they will joke around at work- but around the bosses and with any outsiders, they are a unified block of people whose sole purpose is their task.

Even though the two experiences are separate, the effects are visible- this kind of cathartic play serves as a counterbalance to the stress of work. The Japanese work extremely long hours and the concept of "overtime" is still pretty foreign to them. By letting all barriers fall after work, they get along better in the workplace- a shared, open secret of misbehaviour makes you want to have smooth interoffice relationships.

Is there anything you miss from home? -Rusty
I've kind of passed the Big Slump- the things I used to miss are so far away in terms of time and place that I really don't notice them. Japanese food now tastes normal- fish tastes like my memory of chicken, chicken like my memory of beef, and beef has become something I really don't WANT to eat all the time. Big, stocky, wholesome foods feel like too much, too chunky, too rough. I find myself craving white rice. I haven't had a Coke in months- it's too sweet, too sticky. Tea, coffee, lemon water and sports drinks. I can't smell Japan anymore- the sweet, sickly smell of fructose I talked about way earlier? It's probably still here, but I think it's soaked in.
There are still ways to catch western TV and movies- if I've got fifteen bucks to spare, I could go see last month's North American releases in the theaters. TV runs the BBC in a split-language format- there's an English button on my remote control (that I find myself neglecting).

My friends and family feel pretty far off, but this weekly(ish) report is a dialogue, of sorts, so I don't feel like I've left anything permanently behind. When I get homesick, I loiter online until I find someone to talk to (now that I'm bringing my computer to work, I'm seeing a few more green bubbles on the buddylist- you guys ARE 12-14 hours behind), and I'm honestly too busy (and too happy- every time I order dinner I get a rush of accomplishment- food kanji are HARD) to think much about what I'm missing.

I'm in a good place, and I hope everybody else is too.

Sparks out.

pax