Valentine’s Day and White Day in Japan

I held off writing about Valentine’s Day in February because I wanted to experience the partner day of White Day and reflect on them together.

Get ready for a shock: in Japan Valentine’s Day is for men. I repeat, Valentine’s Day is a day to give men, yes, MEN, chocolates and dinners. One of my younger male students was explaining to me that during his school days, Valentine’s Day made all the boys hold their breath…and hope that a desirable girl presented them with chocolates. For some reason that I cannot possibly understand, in Japan the woman has to make the brave first move on Valentine’s Day. Apparently sometimes it works out great, but my student told me that somehow he always received chocolate from girls who did not capture his interest. Que sera. (He did confess that he would happily eat the chocolate anyway.) He also explained that sometimes his friends would explain a lack of gift receiving by saying that, ‘I’m not Christian, so I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day.” (Naturally this surprised me since in the West we don’t exactly associate Valentine’s Day with religion. I believe this belief in Japan stems from the fact that Valentine’s Day is often referred to as “St. Valentine’s Day” and perhaps as a Western holiday it seems Christian by default.)

Around Valentine’s Day, displays popped up in stores with “Valentine’s Day” (or “St Valentine’s Day) written in English on banners. The displays contained lots of boxes of varying quality chocolates, some very expensive, some not. Also, to my delight, baking supplies, like chocolate chips, powdered sugar, and decorative candies, suddenly exploded. I was finally able to buy a Japanese cake mix and I could have even bought truffle mixes, muffin mixes, and chocolate dip mixes. It seems that Japanese women can bake, but don’t do it with the same year-round fervor that we do back home. (Like most Japanese households, we lack an oven, but fortunately our microwave has a “caki” (cake) setting that bakes. I am a happy girl now that I can bake brownies, cookies, and casseroles!) I think that normally in Japan most baked goods, including beautiful--but tiny--birthday cakes, are purchased from one of the million French patisseries.

Although only men in Japan receive gifts on Valentine’s Day, several of my students, knowing that Valentine’s Day is for “everyone” in the US, gave me chocolates. My little 8 year old girl student gave me a lovely assortment of butter cookies and chocolate almonds from a bakery, perfectly packaged in a lovely red box. Female coworkers very commonly give chocolates to the men they work with, but Jim only got one chocolate. Hee, hee. He didn’t suffer too much, though, because I treated him on Valentine’s Day to a special homemade dinner of paella and chocolate mousse. (Of course, he had to whip the cream for the mousse which is no small feat given that we don’t have a mixer!)

So what about the women? That’s where White Day, exactly one month later on March 14, comes in. None of my students were able to explain the origin of White Day or why it is called “White Day” (in English). Certainly everyone I’ve talked to about this has been surprised that we don’t have White Day in the US. The importance of White Day is that women finally get a treat. According to some of my students, the typical gift on white day is marshmallows. However, since many people apparently don’t care for marshmallows, chocolate is becoming increasingly popular. Also I am told that women often receive larger gifts like jewelry or clothes on White Day. (But all the women I’ve talked to so far didn’t seem to get anything special.) I teach a pair of housewives and when I asked last week what their husbands were going to do for them on White Day, they laughed and said “Nothing!” (They did say that they’re husbands said they could buy something for themselves. Humph. Come on men.)

Interestingly, Jim discovered that White Day was started by Confectioner’s companies-- namely marshmallow companies. It is apparently celebrated in several Asian countries including South Korea, Taiwan and China.

Here is what Wikipedia says about White day in Japan:
In Japan, Valentine's Day is observed by females who present chocolate gifts (either store-bought or handmade), usually to a male, as an expression of love, courtesy or social obligation. The handmade chocolate is usually preferred by the receiver, because it is a sign that the receiving male is the girl's "only one". On White Day, the converse happens: males who received a honmei-choco (本命チョコ?, "chocolate of love") or giri-choco (義理チョコ?, "courtesy chocolate") on Valentine's Day are expected to return the favor by giving gifts, usually more expensive. Traditionally, popular White Day gifts are cookies, jewellery, white chocolate, white lingerie and marshmallows.[1] Sometimes the term sanbai gaeshi (三倍返し?, literally, "thrice the return") is used to describe the generally recited rule that the return gift should be two to three times the cost of the Valentine's gift.[2]

Reading this passage about obligatory gifts reminds me of one of my student’s complaints that because several co-workers bought expensive chocolates for her husband for Valentine’s day, she now had to buy them Godiva chocolate (which is very expensive here). She knew how much they had spent and had to spend more and felt annoyed by this. Whew. I’m glad I don’t have to keep up with such strict social obligations!

After feigned indifference about White Day Jim actually did take me to a French restaurant we love here, but, alas, it was booked out on Saturday night. We instead took a chance on a Mexican restaurant and learned the hard lesson that when not in California, Mexico, the South, or Southwest of the US, steer clear of so called Mexican food! Ugh. My only comment here is that cream cheese is no substitute for sour cream!

White Day was on a Sunday and we planned a little outing to Kurama, an onsen (hot spring), in the Northern outskirts of Kyoto. Our friends, Jeff and Mery, joined us and we all rode the train to Kibune, a stop just south of Kurama, and enjoyed touring a shrine in the woods of Kibune. We also had a lovely lunch of soba (buckwheat noodles) and yuba (a Kansai region special and delicious tofu dish).

After lunch, we followed a hiking trail over a hill and through a wooded temple. The path was a couple of miles long and involved lots of stairs. I really enjoyed our hike because I haven’t gotten to see much nature since we’ve been in Japan. (Kyoto does have lots of gardens, thankfully, but it’s still a city.) The trail was through old growth that reminded me a bit of redwoods, though our guide book describes them as cryptomeria trees. (According to Wikipedia, these trees are called sugi, or Japanese cedar, but are actually related to cypress.)

Oddly, hiking conditions didn’t discourage many Japanese women from wearing their miniskirts and stiletto heeled boots. (We were so astonished that women would dress in this way for going to the woods that we started clandestinely taking pictures of footwear sported on the trip.) I know it was White Day, but it seems there is no limit to the lengths Japanese women will go for fashion!!

After hiking up to the mountain temple of Kurama, we hit the onsen for a nice hot soak. This was my first onsen, but I have been to our neighborhood sento (public bath) several times, and am familiar with the routine of washing at the shower before getting in the communal bath. (This is all done with no clothes on, btw, which sometimes is a little awkward for Westerners to get used to. The baths are always divided by gender, so it’s really not so bad.) Actually, it was funny, I have become so accustomed to scrubbing every inch of my body very thoroughly and slowly as everyone else does, but at the onsen I think I scrubbed more than anyone which was a first for me. Normally at the sento, I will scrub everywhere, wash my hair twice and condition it only to discover that a woman beginning her shower at the same time is still on her first limb. I never knew that the ability to deep clean was an acquired skill. Anyway, the onsen was great because it was outdoor and featured a view of the mountain. Nothing like relaxing in hot springs in the nude while gazing at nature. Ahh.

Best. White Day. Ever. :)

More Japanese Winter Fun: Coming of Age Day and the Bean-throwing Festival

It seems that the New Year celebration in the first days of January is just the beginning of festivities in the winter in Japan.

In mid-January, Coming of Age Day gives everyone a reason to not go to work, eat street food, and watch all the 20 year olds stroll the streets wearing their gorgeous kimonos. They actually wear what is called a furisode, which is a type of kimono with very long sleeves (reminiscent of sleeves on the graduation gowns of master’s degree recipients). An English teaching book I have says that the long sleeves can be used as pockets and were often used to hide love letters. Therefore, once a woman is married she wears kimono with just normal length sleeves. Ha. Anyway, what I most enjoyed of the day was seeing all the 20 year olds in their finery. Apparently they often rent the furisode and hairpieces. (Often when a woman dresses up in a fancy kimono, she’ll wear a wig that has hair pulled back and piled on the top.) The girls also have their makeup done and then go out with friends to drink that night. Actually, Coming of Age day really reminded me of a Japanese version of American proms minus the dancing and limos.

In the weekend closest to Coming of Age day we headed to the Sanjusangen-do temple (the one with the 1001 statues of Kanon) to see the annual archery competition. The archery competition is for 20 year old men and woman from all over the country. I believe that this is their one shot (literally) at this tournament, but there were some older competitors in a different category, so I’m not quite sure about that. Anyway, despite the big crowd we managed to squeeze a peek at the competition a few rounds before it ended (for this I can thank our far-above-average height as a tremendous advantage in crowds). The archers were impressive, though most missed the mark (again literally) by quite a lot. To be fair, the targets were very far away and, if I had tried, I would have certainly been a danger to all the spectators.


In the first three days of February is Setsubun or the “Bean-Throwing Festival”. This festival is supposed to follow the lunar calendar’s beginning of spring, but the lunar calendar moves around compared to the Western calendar and apparently this is a little too flexible for Japan, so this “beginning of spring” ceremony is always celebrated on Feb 2,3,4 here. (Did I mention that February is the coldest month in Kyoto. Brrrr. We even had snow flurries yesterday…so spring is not exactly around the corner!)

Nonetheless, Setsubun is perhaps my favorite Japanese celebration so far since it involves evil spirits, bean throwing, bonfires and sushi rolls! Wheee. As it happens when you don’t really speak the language, I had been noticing lots displays in the supermarkets with pictures funny monster-looking characters, special food and masks, but I really had no idea what this stuff was about. Ah, marketing and holidays are keen partners in Japan! I finally figured out that the monster-men were supposed to be demons or oni and on Feb 2, people dressed as oni get thousands of roasted soybeans thrown at them at certain shrines. The soybeans are considered good luck beans and they are thrown at the oni to “cleanse the evil from the past year” and to rid people of bad health (according to Wikipedia anyway). Apparently people may do this in their own homes as well, though I’m sure not everyone does. In the Kansai region of Japan where we currently reside, it is thought to be lucky to eat your age plus one in roasted soybeans, too, on this day.

Also for Setsubun, sushi rolls (makizushi) are eaten while facing the “lucky direction” which is based on the Chinese zodiac and changes yearly. While eating them you must be silent. This is said to bring good luck in the upcoming year. One of my English students who works in the sushi export business said that you must not cut the makizushi because it is supposed to represent good health and cutting it would be really bad luck. Ouch. This year the direction was Southwest and on Feb 3rd, Jim made makizushi with his labmates and ate it for lunch and then we made it for dinner and he and I dutifully faced Southwest and ate our rolls in silence.

Also, on Feb 3rd at one shrine in Kyoto at 11pm, a huge bonfire is lit. The bonfire, composed of people’s good luck ornaments from last year, was the biggest bonfire I’ve ever seen. As luck (ha) would have it, the shrine in question was just down our street, so we walked there, took in the street food scene, and stared at the fire with some friends.

So now that we’ve rung in the New Year at the temple, prayed for luck in the shrines, eaten lucky sushi rolls in the lucky direction and eaten our age in soybeans we should be having really good luck this year! Only time will tell… ;)

The Japanese New Year

As I mentioned in the previous post, the New Year celebration in Japan is much more significant and family-oriented than is Christmas. The basic celebration of New Year involves going to a Buddhist temple around midnight and joining in the ringing of a giant copper bell. The bell is rung 108 times to represent the 108 human sins in Buddhism.

We joined our multicultural (from Singapore, France, Ukraine and the US) group of friends for a dinner followed by a trip to our neighborhood temple to ring the bell. We stood in line waiting as groups of families took their turn directing a large beam into the giant bell. Each temple has a copper bell (known as a “bonshu”) and on the bell are 108 little balls representing those human sins. Below the balls is a lotus flower where the bell is struck. On the bell’s lower section is an inscription apparently that describes where and when the bell was made. Kyoto has some of the most famous bonshu in all of Japan (or so I read).
We stepped up to ring the bonshu and each of us grabbed a cord that was tied to the beam. The beam was suspended so that one only needed to give the cords a bit of tugging to achieve a nice loud crash. I really felt sorry for the Buddhist priests who were assisting with this process because it was really, really cold (there were actually snow flurries) and their bare heads and hands couldn’t have been comfortable. (Even in gloves my hands were numb!) Also, their robes didn’t look that warm, though apparently they will wear up to three layers of robes to combat the cold. Of course, only in Japan would there be a Buddhist priest stationed below the bell--not exactly a quiet place--to capture every group’s bell-ringing with their own camera. Ha. Kindly, the priests had built two small wood fires in the temples grounds and they were serving hot tea as well. No doubt they wanted to provide these creature comforts to their guests even though they weren’t able to enjoy them since they had to man the bell line!

New Year’s day (Jan 1st), everyone goes to the Shinto shrines to pray and give a small offering. Fortunately, there is a major shrine just around the corner from us, so Jim and I headed there in the afternoon. We were astounded at the size of the crowd and we dutifully waited in a very long line to reach the shrine to thrown in our coins and say a prayer. Fortunately, massive crowds here are very civilized and I have never felt uncomfortable in them. (It probably helps that we are so much taller; it allows us to see above the crowd a bit…;) ) When we reached the prayer spot (I’ll call it an altar), we noticed that there were many people in what looked like an inner sanctuary, engaged in some serious prayer or contemplation. My guess is that they must have gotten bad fortunes ;) ...for the other main activity at the shrines on Jan 1st is to purchase a fortune. Fortunes are available all the time at shrines, but it seems like the New Year is an especially popular fortune-receiving opportunity. At the Heian Shrine where we were, people shake a wooden container of wood sticks and pull one out randomly. They then take this to the window where the fortune paper corresponding to the number on the stick is distributed. Good fortunes are kept, but bad fortunes are immediately tied to lines or trees within the shrine. Following the receipt of a bad fortune, people will pray to the gods for a turn in this fortune. We have only gotten our fortunes once since arriving to Japan, and mine was the highest you can get, so I figured I’d stick with it! (Besides, the fortunes at this shrine were all in Japanese and we didn’t have anyone with us to help read them!)

Outside of the shrine there were tons of temporary vendors selling street food. The main fare: takoyaki (fried dough balls with octopus inside), okonomiyaki (cabbage and egg pancake-type things), yakisoba (fried buckwheat noodles), cotton candy (strange food only consumable by children), French crepes, shrimp crackers with fried eggs, fish shaped Belgium waffles filled with sweet beans (they’re really good), and frankfurters on sticks. Normally it is considered bad manners to eat while on the street, so I now relish these opportunities to gobble down street food on the street!

We then biked to another shrine that is quite popular on New Year’s and saw much the same scene. That shrine had displayed many pictures of tigers, which was a nice touch since 2010 is the year of the tiger. Roar! (The Chinese zodiac animals are used here as well to represent various years.)

I had read that New Year’s day is one of the times to see people out in their traditional finest: kimonos and fur stoles for the women, robes on the men, and wooden flip flops with slipper socks on both genders. Though we did see a few people dressed in this way, I was disappointed that the vast majority of people were not wearing traditional clothes. I’m hoping that many people chose not to wear traditional clothes because it was so cold, but it may just be that not so many people wear traditional clothes at all anymore. 
It’s really too bad, because there is almost nothing as beautiful as a Japanese woman in a kimono.

The final aspect of New Year’s is one that I cannot describe in great depth since we are not part of a Japanese family. Basically, it is a family time and grown children will return to their parents’ home to spend the few days visiting the shrines of their ancestors. Not surprisingly there are also special foods consumed only at New Years. Most of the foods are prepared in the days leading up to Jan 31st, because it is traditional for women not to cook for the first three days of the year—it’s sort of a rest period. For this reason, the foods are often smoked, dried or pickled so that they remain fresh for the three days. (It’s funny—three days of not going to the grocery store in the US is perfectly normal, but to Japanese women who visit the grocery store daily, it is an event for which to prepare!)
Apparently not that long ago, all stores were closed during this time, but now there is enough economic pressure that many larger grocery stores will remain open throughout the holidays. (Sadly it seems like much the same trend in the US, too.)

On Jan 3rd, Jim and I were invited to have “osechi” (New Year’s food) with Kazumi, a woman who runs a woman’s “tea salon” for Japanese housewives that meets once a month. Later this month I will be a guest speaker at the tea salon to talk about American culture. (Still trying to figure out how to structure that slightly broad topic—more details to follow!) In repayment for speaking, Kazumi wanted to teach me a little about Japanese New Year. Once we arrived to her house, we found that she had invited a younger cousin who was just learning English and his friend and they had dutifully prepared talking points under Kazumi’s direction. Kazumi and her mother brought out lovely trays of osechi and we all discussed the various components. There were pickled vegetables, dried cod, and all sorts of other hors’doeuvres all with a unique Japanese taste. I found them quite tasty, though I am a pretty adventurous eater (fortunately!) Many of the types of osechi were not parceled for four, so we dutifully used the serving chopsticks to divide portions. My awkward moment occurred with a slice of fish roe (fish eggs). There were only two slices of the fish roe and four eaters, so I thought Jim and I would both split our slices in half. Unfortunately, Jim beat me to the punch and shared his slice with both of the men, leaving me with a whole slice of fish roe encased in the egg sac. Oh boy. I tried to cut it but ended up making a huge mess of little fish eggs all over my plate and chopsticks to the extent that Kazumi’s mom had to fetch a cloth for me to clean things up! Oh dear. Once I couldn’t break the slice I was forced just to stick the whole giant bite in my mouth. Yum,yum. Let me just say that I won’t be buying any fish roe at the store any time soon. ;)

Perhaps the most special part of the New Year’s food is the miso shiru (we call this miso soup, though Japanese don’t consider it soup necessarily). Miso soup is a required component of the Japanese meal--even at breakfast--but there is a special type of miso that is consumed at New Year’s. This is a sweeter and lighter colored miso and apparently how it is prepared varies across different regions of Japan. I actually bought miso paste and made some at home which was quite similar to what we had at Kazumi’s. The only difference was that the miso at Kazumi’s had homemade mochi (soft, gooey rice paddies) in it. The making of homemade mochi is quite an important part of New Year’s (or at least I think it is!)

I could say more about the New Year, but this is probably more than enough for one post! In any case, we very much enjoyed the celebration and I have to say that to meet the New Year by ringing a Buddhist bell, eating street food, and shrine-hopping was certainly a more poetic way of welcoming a new year than the bar-hopping and drunken scenes of the Western New Year’s celebrations. I did miss my New Year’s Day Southern black eyed peas and collards, though…I guess old habits die hard. ;)

Christmas in Japan

Christmas in Japan is not exactly what I’d expect given that the country is 84-96% Shinto/Buddhist and only about 1% Christian. (These figures were obtained from Wikipedia, of course.) Having already spent one Christmas in a non-Christian country (the Gambia), I figured that Christmas would pass unnoticed by mainstream Japanese culture. What a surprise when we started seeing Christmas decorations in early November such as the giant lit signs that said, “Merry Christmas” (in English nonetheless) at Kyoto Station (the huge central rail station).

After that we began to see Christmas decorations and hear carols (identical to those in the West) in major shopping malls and stores. Some packaged products even had snowmen and Santa and even the grocery stores had sections with Western sweets and goodies labeled “Merry Christmas” (in English). Now, was this for the benefit of the foreign residents of Kyoto? Absolutely not! It turns out that the Japanese do (sort of) celebrate Christmas…

Apparently Santa does stop in Japan on Christmas Eve to bring presents for children and, oddly enough, he is often depicted in pictures as coming down a chimney even though no one has a chimney here. Also on Christmas Eve, families eat Christmas cake, which has been purchased in a department store or bakery. The Christmas cakes are lovely affairs, with little signs that say (in English) “Merry Christmas”. The one we had even came with a tiny device that played Christmas carols. Just before Christmas, Jim and I were in a department store with a colleague from Jim’s lab, Sunnichi, and his girlfriend, Eumi. In noticing the bustle in the Christmas cake area, I remarked to Eumi that we didn’t have Christmas cakes in the US. The look of utter shock on her face was amusing since I’m sure the tradition assumes its roots in Western culture. I tried to explain about fruit cake, but describing a cake that few seem to like but everyone still buys seems enigmatic even to me.

As for decorations, we have seen a profusion of decorations from tree figurines to larger artificial Christmas trees. Of course, with the Japanese flair for style and cuteness, in addition to traditional green trees one can find hot pink trees with bows and sparkles. We were amused by the large variety of Santa costumes available in one home store. Most of them were “sexy Santa” female costumes…like Halloween met Christmas in Japan. Hmmm. Thanks to the abundance of Christmas decorations available, I have a gel gem set on our window that is a Santa sleigh with five reindeer (wearing red scarves) and surrounded by snowflakes. Cuteness!! Although house holiday decorations are nothing comparable to the US, I have seen a few houses with outdoor Christmas lights, stars and Santas. And, I couldn’t neglect to mention the life-size Colonel Sanders dressed in a Santa outfit in front of KFC stores. :)

[Sidenote: Apparently KFC has done well with marketing and has managed to convince many folks here that fried chicken is “the food” of Christmas in the West—never mind about turkey, ham or duck. We actually did eat KFC at one of our Christmas parties and I have to admit that it was delicious! I believe it (along with McDonald’s) is reputed to be much better here. What that says about the standards of American consumers I’ll leave you to ponder.]

To me, the oddest part about Christmas in Japan is that, as Eiya, the postdoc in Jim’s lab said, “Christmas is for lovers.” Since Eiya spent several years in the US, she has a grasp of what our holidays are like, and she explained to us that it seems Japan and the West have switched the practices of Christmas and New Years. While in the West, Christmas is family time and New Years is for dates, parties and friends, in Japan, Christmas is a special date night while New Years is strictly family time. Indeed, in reading a little about Japanese Christmas online, I found that Christmas is somewhat similar to Valentine’s Day. Sweethearts give each other presents and there are decorations everywhere. However, people still go to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and businesses are open as usual. Ironically, Dec 23 is a holiday in Japan because it is the present emperor’s birthday. So, Jim didn’t go to work on the 23rd, but did work on the 24th and 25th! What an alter universe we are in!