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.
That parfait and those chocolates are amazing! You are a lucky guy!
Looks like I’ll be interviewing you for the Citizen of the Month’s Great Interview Experiment. How can I reach you? I’m annoa2mi at yahoo dot com.
anno - Thanks, I remember how lucky I am every day. I’ll send you an email.
Nice post!
This amazing chocolates gift
tarawat - Thanks!
how wonderfully beautiful to have a woman love you like that. what beautiful little chocolates.
Thanks CJ, she sure is great
Japan is very well known for its cutie stuffs and good packaging …. but for chocolates, i’m quite surprised though.
anyway nice pictures dude…..
It s so beautiful there in Japan!
They have such wondeful and delicious desserts!
would you be planning to post some recipes in the future?
izzy69rocks - I’ve seen a lot of things in Japan neatly organized and cute you’re right. Chocolates are big on Valentine’s Day.
Lilibeth - Unfortunately I won’t be able to share many recipes because Mai usually makes it up as she goes without a recipe. If she does right any down I’ll post them though.