This is my first experience with Chugen. Chugen (also called Ochugen) was originally a day that people gave gifts to the ancestral spirits. Shopping at Iwataya was amazing, there was one huge area dedicated to picking out gifts and a waiting area for sending them out. We sent the gift of… fish eggs! I took this picture with my camera phone. I didn’t think of taking a picture of the entire store, doh. The first picture were the choices we used, the 2nd picture are the eggs and fish stuffed with eggs.

In America we usually do a mutual exchange of gifts, etc. I give her something, she gives me something, I take her on a date, ah… love is in the air. But Valentine’s Day In Japan is something that’s quite different for me. This is my first time celebrating Valentine’s here and there are two parts to this holiday. On Valentines Day a girl will give the guy some chocolate. It’s either purchased or hand made. The 2nd part is White Day where a guy gives the girl a gift, that’s approximately 3 times the value as he received (so I’ve heard from wikipedia). I wasn’t able to get pictures of the store displays, but they look exactly the same as the displays in America except there are tons of chicks and almost no guys wandering in that area.

Because it was too much chocolate to handle, my fiancee gave me a gift on the 13th, and then one on the 14th. On the 13th she hand made a chocolate parfait! It was amazing! It looked and tasted like it was expensive and hand crafted by a chef. It contained chocolate, ice cream, more chocolate, cake, chocolate covered crispy things, and strawberry Pocky. Oh, and hand whipped whip cream! Here are a few pictures (sorry for the blurriness, I’m not used to my friends camera yet). It was delicious.

On Valentine’s Day she gave me a wonderfully wrapped gift. It looked expensive and the presentation was great, so at first I thought she bought it at some expensive shop. She told me that she hand made the chocolate using ‘an idea’ but no recipe and a few ingredients she thought would work. And she wrapped it herself.

Here’s my blurry picture of the chocolates when I opened the cute basket they were in.

And finally here are the chocolates she made. They were powered with cocoa and had a very rich taste. It wasn’t a dark chocolate taste, and wasn’t a milk chocolate taste, it felt like a truffle when I ate it, but it was nothing I’ve tasted before.

When I opened the gift I felt overwhelmed and a little teary eyed when I ate the first piece because I know she spent all of that time and effort to prepare everything and that’s very special to me. Even when it’s not a holiday she often does special things like this to show me how she feels about me, and she is the first person in my life to ever do this. She’s so great. This was the best Valentine’s Day ever.