世論 What Japan Thinks

Recently, Macromill Inc. published the results of a survey into Saint Valentine’s Day. They interviewed 515 female company employees aged between 20 and 39 from their internet monitor group over two days towards the end of January this year. In the sample 57 women or 11.1% were aged between 20 and 24, 169 or 32.8% between 25 and 30, 182 or 35.3% between 30 and 34, and 107 or 20.8% between 35 and 39.

In Japan, Saint Valentine’s Day actually incorporates two different celebrations. Before I mention them, note that this day is just for women to give stuff to men; we get our chance next month, on White Day, the 14th of March. One celebration is, of course, the one we all know in the west, giving a present to your object of affection. The second is “male appreciation day”, where 義理チョコ, giri chocolates, are given to men, usually work colleagues, in theory given freely as an expression of thanks, but the word “giri” can be translated as “obligatory”, indicating that most female employees have to pay for chocolates for all the men in the office. Mari Kanazawa covers this issue today in her own inimitable style, as does Shari at My So-Called Japanese Life.

At work there’s quite a fair haul of goodies – there is the standard chocolates (Royce, from our company shop), then some Zunda beans Pretz (I think they are a Valentine gift anyway!), and a huge selection of hand-made cakes by one of my colleague’s wife, whose hobby is making cakes for us. I had a lovely cherry sponge, done to the quality (including the obligatory double-wrapping) of commercial cakes.
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Tonight’s Trivia no Izumi had a viewer writing in asking what was the best way to conduct oneself on Saint Valentine’s Day in order to improve one’s chances of getting chocolate from a woman – remember that in Japan St Valentine’s Day is gifts from women to men only.

First up they asked 500 men what they would do, and got a panel of 100 women to vote on each of the activities to see if they agreed it might improve their chances. Amongst the collected suggestions were talking in a loud voice, working a bit harder or conducting oneself more lively, gelling or otherwise styling one’s hair, and acting cool. Each of these options garnered a mere handful of votes from the female panelists, the best score being an insignificant 7 out of 100, proving that in Japan too, men are from 火星 and women are from 金星 (Mars and Venus, of course; literally the fire and gold planets respectively).

So, taking a different tack, they enlisted the help of four female psychologists to try to find out what they thought men should do. After a three-hour exchange of views, the collected opinion on how men can increase their chance of getting Valentine’s chocolates was simply to leave your bag open by your desk over lunch or other break time, so your secret admirer could silently slip the prezzie in without fear of a confrontation or rejection.

If you hear about a massive increase of thefts from briefcases next week, you know who to blame!