White Day: Did You Get/Give Return Gifts for the Valentine's Day Chocolates?

It's March 14th, which is called White Day in Japan! As I wrote previously last month on this blog, White Day is the day for boys/men to give return gifts to the girls/women who gave Valentine's Day gifts to them. Therefore many shops sell small gift items before the White Day, and shopping malls and department stores have a special corner for it as you can see in the photos. In towns you may see a long line in front of some popular sweets shops and cake shops in this season.

So, working men who received "Giri Choco (Social Chocolates gift)" at work may have the same stress for the White Day as working women for Valentine's Day to choose nice return gifts. However, finding a nice return gift for the day is not always men's task.

Many men who are in manager class or higher usually receive many chocolates on Valentine's Day from women who are under his charge, but generally these men wouldn't enjoy going out to find many small gifts in women's items sections or cute sweets sections. Moreover some of them have no idea on what would be proper return gifts, so and therefore they entrust the task to their wives. For this reason customers at White Day gift corners are not only men. Wives also go there to buy nice gifts instead of their husbands.

It can be a stressful task for the wives, too, but apparently some wives are saying that it is a good opportunity to keep a watchful eye on husbands' inappropriate human relationships at work. Oops, hope their husbands' are "shiro" (means "white" or "innocence" in Japanese) from the suspicion!