In most of countries, people celebrate Valentine’s Day by giving flowers, chocolates, jewellery or other presents of all shapes and sizes to their loved ones or those they admire.
However, celebrating Valentine's Day is slightly different in Japan. Normally, females give chocolates to males on Valentine's Day to show their love, admiration and appreciation, and recent years, it has been more diversified and there are names for each type.
Chocolates giving to females' lovers or for the ones they have a crush on are called 本命チョコ : ほんめいちょこ: honmeichoko and male to female is called 逆チョコ：ぎゃくちょこ: gyakuchoko.
Chocolates giving to their male colleagues, friends or family members are called 義理チョコ: ぎりちょこ：girichoko.
Nowadays, females friends also give chocolates to each other. These are called 友チョコ : ともちょこ：tomochoko.
The chocolates to treat themselves are called マイチョコ ：マイちょこ：maichoko. These are usually the luxury chocolates they don't purchase frequently.
For those males who receive chocolates on Valentine's Day, they will have to return the small gifts on White Valentine's Day, 14th March. Different gifts have different meaning. We will talk about this next month.
This is no wonder February is definitely a chocolate season in Japan. Lots of stores will also have limited edition chocolates just for Valentine's Day.
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