St. Valentine's Day in Japan

St. Valentine's Day (they use the whole name) in Japan seems to be about two things, chocolate and lingerie. For obvious reasons, I won't go into the lingerie but it was advertised a lot. This is about chocolate.

I must admit that chocolate here in Japan is much improved from some of the waxy, hard stuff I ate many years ago. Like all things the Japanese do, they have learned and improved over time and now it's quite good. I don't think it is as good as the Belgian chocolate I had in Brussels but certainly as good as the stuff we get in the US. Japanese women seem to have found the romantic qualities of the stuff more than the men. In the days before the holiday (no one gets it off, it's just another day to sell something) women were lined up 5 to 10 deep at a special counter that just sold chocolate. This went on at all times of the day, at least when the store was open. The problem was that I used this passageway to get to one of the trains I have to take from Shibuya where I am staying. It was a fight with little old ladies elbowing me around as I tried to get through the gauntlet. All the time the girls in colorful kerchiefs and uniforms behind the counter were shouting, "Irasshiamase, Irrashaimase," like carnival barkers. Irrashaimase means, "Welcome, come on in" and is used in most small shops and in some of the larger stores in their specialty areas. It is an imperative form of the verb to be, if you want to get technical.

Needless to say, it was a challenge to walk through each day but funny as well. The Japanese in Tokyo are kind of like bees, they seem to have a need to brush up against each other a lot, they are always busy, walking briskly from place to place and they have no patience with you if you don't know where you are going. I got many looks as I walked through as if to say, "Can't you see that this is for buying chocolate, not walking?" As if I know, I am a man and a gaijin to boot. I used that to my advantage and ignored it.