Valentines Day

(Austin)

    Valentines day is a rather interesting event. In Japan, women give guys chocolate on valentines, the complete opposite of how we do it in America. Valentines day is usually the day where a lady would show her affections for a guy she wants to get close to. 

    There are 2 different kinds of chocolate given: Homei Choco and Giri Chico. Homei chocolate is the romance related chocolate. It is often much more elegant and sometimes even homemade to really express ones feelings. Giri chocolate on the other hand is given to friends. It isn't romance related, but a girl would give to guy friend that they value highly.

    Now the guys are probably thinking: "Yeah! What a nice system!", while the ladies are probably wondering where their chocolate is at. Dont worry, Japan has you covered. Exactly 1 month later, March 14th, is White Day. White day is the day when all the guys who received chocolate return the favor to the ladies, giving back chocolates. Guys ONLY give chocolate to the girls that gave them chocolate, meaning if a guy received no chocolate, he gives none.

    Valentines day and White day are extremely large events in Japan for starting and continuing relationships, both friendly and romantic.

    On valentines day I got giri choco from my host mom. It was seriously good. The Japanese seriously know how to make good chocolate. Eat your heart out Hershey's.

The Last Supper

(Austin) On Dec 24th I have to move out of my host family's home and into a school dorm for winter break, so before that happened, my host family decided to take me out to a very fancy tofu restaurant. Now I imagine many of you just read that sentence and cringed. Tofu? Really?
I was the same; I was concerned, however this was an amazing meal. It was simply delicious, no other way to explain it. It was a 15 course meal. I didn't take many pictures of the food (sorry), but trust me, it was good.
Also, the two people pictures are my host mom and dad.