chocolate

Happy Valentine's Day from Japan!

maki — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:38:25 +0100

Happy Valentine’s Day to you from Japan!

As I’ve reported here previously, Valentine’s Day is a huge, serious, and often rather ridiculous day here, and it seems to get wackier every year. I saw a report on a local news program here the other day about the new trendy chocolate packages this year, such as chocolates for female bosses to give to their male underlings to tell them to ‘hang in there’ and to ‘be more of a man’ (apparently these are intended especially for soushoku otoko or “vegetarian men” (or in other words men who are not manly enough to eat meat…not necessarily referring to real vegetarians). Another one which I thought was hilarious is the “Propose To Me Or Else” chocolate gift set; it contains a fake diamond engagement ring with a note that says “I’ll be expecting a real one of these soon”, a card that says “Good until” with place to write a date in, and oh yes some chocolates.

Of all the myriads of chocolates on offer, this is my favorite this year:

Called Kobato (which means little dove or pigeon), it’s a tiny, white chocolate dove, barely a mouthful. I am not normally a fan of white chocolate, but this level of cuteness is impossible to resist. The Kobato come packaged in a little box like so:

They are made by a famous confectionery maker or okashiya (お菓子屋　- maker of sweet things) based in the historic town of Kamakura called Toshimaya (Japanese-only website). Besides Kamakura, they have stalls or counters in several department store food halls in the Tokyo/Kanagawa area. Their main claim to fame is this, a light, buttery cookie called Hato (dove or pigeon) Sablé (鳩サブレー). It too is adorable, though expensive at about 100 yen per cookie.

Anyway, I hope that Valentine’s Day is as sweet for you as you want it to be!

Roulade au Chocolat Saint Valentin: Chocolate Roulade Cake for Valentine's Day

maki — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:21:53 +0100

From the archives. The very iffy photo shows that it is from the very early days of Just Hungry! I look back at this with nostalgia, because not only have my photography skills improved somewhat, it reflects a time in my life when I was into a far more complicated kind of cooking than I am now. I no longer bake things like this, but if you want a pretty spectacular chocolate dessert for Valentine's Day, and have the time and patience, I do highly recommend this rich yet feathery light little confection. I've edited it slightly to be more accurate (what the heck did I mean by 'small container of cream' anyhow). Originally published on February 14, 2004.

This is a small but quite spectacular chocolate dessert, that I made this afternoon and now is waiting for us to devour tonight. It is basically a rolled cake, with a featherlight chocolate bisquit (sponge) made without any flour and rolled with almond buttercream; this is then covered with creamy chocolate ganache, and finally dusted with cocoa. It's not that hard to make but it is a bit involved, so if you'd like to try it please follow the steps carefully.

It's a perfect St. Valentine's Day dessert of course when it's formed into a heart shape as I did here, but it can be enjoyed at any time. You can simply make one round cake, or make little bite-sized rolls (rather like the big sushi rolls), and ice each one individually with the ganache.

Now, this recipe does use rather precise weights, unlike most of the recipes I post here. But in this case it really is worth the effort to take out the kitchen scales and measure everything.

Since the recipe is given in steps, here's the whole shopping list:

200g / 7 oz (2 bars) of best-quality Swiss or Belgian dark chocolate, 70% cacao content
180ml / about 3/4 US cups, or 1 container of whole or heavy cream
1 block of unsalted butter
Pure vanilla essence
200g / 7oz of ground almonds
White sugar
5 large eggs, pasteurized or very fresh organic
Cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate powder!)
Powdered sugar (optional)

Incidentally, you can tell that it was originally a recipe from a Japanese source because of the rather precise amounts listed for the ingredients - for some reason, Japanese recipes are very exact. This originally appeared in a 1970s issue of Today's Cooking Magazine, the companion magazine for a long-running cooking show on NHK TV of the same name. I have more than 100 of these magazines, and I treasure them dearly. The older issues belonged to my mother but now I own the lot, from the '70s up to 2009.

Recipe: Roulade au Chocolat Saint Valentin: Chocolate Roulade Cake for Valentine's Day

I've divided this into 4 steps: the bisquit or sponge, the almond buttercream, the ganache, and finally the assembly. [Edit: I had an extra egg in the original ingredients..there is no egg in the almond buttercream. Also, the yolk is just mixed in at the very end to the chocolate ganache.]

Part 1: The bisquit (sponge cake) base

3 large eggs, separated
45 g / 1 1/2 oz. sugar
30 g / 1 oz of dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 150°C or 300° F. Line a sponge pan (or a metal pan about 30cm x 20cm, or 12 inches x 8 inches or so, with a lip) with a teflon baking paper like Bake-o-Glide or buttered kitchen parchment paper.

Add 30g/ 1 oz (or about rounded 2 Tbs) of sugar to the egg yolks, and beat at high speed until the mixture is a very very pale yellow (sort of the color of undyed cheddar), and it falls in ribbons from the whisk.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the rest of the sugar (15g / 1/2 oz, or about rounded 1 Tbs) and beat until it forms soft peaks. Don't overbeat or your sponge will be rather dry.

Microwave the chocolate for about 45 seconds to 1 minute until softened. Beat it with a spoon to liquify it. Add 1 Tbs of hot water drop by drop (it will seize up, or turn stiff and dull looking, at first, then loosen up) to the chocolate.

Add the chocolate to the egg yolk mix. Mix in half of the egg white into this, then fold in the rest, being careful not to over mix. Pour the mixture into the pan and smooth out the top with a wide spatula or even a piece of clean cardboard.

Bake for 20 minutes. Take out and let cool. Put a damp kitchen cloth over this to prevent it from drying out.

Part 2: Almond buttercream

80g / 2 1/2 oz finely ground almonds
50g / 1 1/2 oz unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
33g / 1 oz sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Put the ground almonds in a frying pan over medium heat and toast lightly, stirring all the time. As soon as it is toasted just enough so that it has turned a golden brown and smells great, take it out of the pan (or it will continue cooking and may get burned and bitter tasting).

Whip the butter and sugar together until the sugar is totally incorporated into the cream. It shouldn't feel gritty when you are done. (Do this in a small food processor if you have one.) Add the vanilla.

Mix in the toasted almond powder.

Part 3: Chocolate ganache

170g / 6 oz. dark chocolate
160g / 5 1/2 oz heavy cream
100g / 3 1/2 oz unsalted butter
1 egg yolk, very fresh organic or pasteurized

Heat the cream in a low heat in a thick-bottomed pan until hot but not boiling. Add the chocolate, cut up into chunks or shredded, and mix until thoroughly melted.

Pour out the chocolate mixture into a bowl and let cool for a bit until it's just rather warm when you stick your finger in. Add the butter to this, mixing rapidly until it's totally incorporated. Mix in the egg yolk. Let it cool in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Part 4: Assembly

Cut the bisquit (sponge cake) into strips about 2 inches / 5 cm wide. You want them to be pretty even, so it's helpful to use a ruler to make sure the strips are of the same width. Spread the tops with the buttercream.

Carefully peel the cake strips off the parchment paper with a spatula. Don't worry if the strips tear though. Roll the strips one by one around and around until you end up with a roll about 15cm / inches in diameter.

With a knife and your hands, form the roll into a heart, by pressing the back of a knife into the top indentation, and making the end rather pointy. (Of course, you can just leave it as a circle too.) Smoosh the top a bit if necessary to make it more or less even.

Cover the sides of the heart or roll with a thin layer of the chocolate ganache. Cover the top with a thick layer of the ganache, smoothing it out so you keep the heart shape.

Dust the top with cocoa, through a fine sieve or tea strainer.

To make the heart pattern, cut out some hearts in a piece of paper about the same size as your rolled cake. Place the paper on top of the cake, and dust lightly with icing / powdered sugar.

Some other chocolatey things from the archives

For something more manly and assertive, try Guinness Cake with Whisky-Sour Icing. This remains a favorite cake in our house, since it's very easy to make and creates a bit of a sensation.

This mousse au chocolat is also a perennial favorite - very easy and very delicious.

If you are a vegan or on a strict diet, try the chocolate version of this tofu-based pudding.

On the other hand, what could be more indulgent than homemade dark chocolate peanut butter cups?

A bit of Swiss milk chocolate

maki — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:52:08 +0200

(A quick note here. From time to time, I get an email asking if I can send Swiss chocolate bars to another country, if they pay me etc. (OK some people just email asking for chocolate without even mentioning payment, but those are easy to ignore :P) I really don’t have the time for that I’m sorry to say. Besides, I am not in Switzerland at the moment (I’m in France), and even though I go back to Zürich once a month or so, I don’t have the time to run around buying chocolate bars and mailing them out to strangers. I suggest that you google around for people who might do this kind of thing for profit. Chocolate selling ain’t my game!)

I spent the last couple of weeks surrounded by chocolate bars.

First, I sent out 53 (plus a couple…I lost count) of chocolate bars to the winner of the Menu for Hope raffle. (It was sent out so late because the recipient was away from home.) The winner had requested that the selection be made up mostly of milk chocolate bars. Now, you might think that assembling 50 + different kinds of milk chocolate would be a tough call, but not here! There are many, many more than 50 kinds of milk chocolate sold in stores here - and I’m not even including the kinds with things like nuts or fruit or whatever mixed in.

Then last week, I got the ‘bill’ from my stepfather (who is an accountant) for doing my U.S. tax return. (Yes, all U.S. citizens must file them regardless of where they live.) He wanted some Swiss chocolate - milk, of course.

Nowadays, dark chocolate is in, especially since it’s supposed to be healthy or something. I do like that intense hit of cacao now and then, but I must admit that I am a milk chocolate kind of girl. Nothing surpasses the sensation of a combination of chocolate and smooth creamm melting smoothly on the tongue.

Here in Switzerland, it’s generally believed that the chocolatiers got a bit behind on the dark chocolate craze, and have been playing catchup to the Belgians and the French. These days there are all kinds of dark chocolate varietals and such on the shelves here. But still, Switzerland does milk chocolate the best in my opinion. Sure you can get terrific handmade truffles and pralines in Paris or Bruges, and you could argue that Belgian dark chocolate is better (though I’m not sure that’s true anymore). But a plain, (relatively) inexpensive bar of milk chocolate? Swiss all the way.

Here are a few of the mostly milk chocolate bars that were sent out to the eager recipients (sorry for the iffy photos for some of them, I was in a hurry). At current exchange rates you can just about convert the francs (CHF) directly to US dollars (1 CHF = $1). Going from the least expensive on up:

M-Budget is the ‘no-label’ house brand of Migros, the leading supermarket chain in Switzerland. This full size 100g bar of chocolate is only 50 Rappen, or 50 cents! It’s not bad, quite sweet. I think the package design is quite nice too. (The cheapest not-on-sale bar of chocolate I’ve seen so far is 25 Rappen. That one is not so nice.)

Frey is another Migros house brand. This one has a Euro ‘08 (that’s soccer/football) design on it. Here’s the Frey lineup on the Migros online shop, LeShop.

This is a standard bar of milk chocolate from one of the big makers, Cailler (Nestlé), costing about 1.20 CHF. (They messed around with the packaging a couple of years ago, and had to woo the Swiss public back, but now they seem to be back on top.) A very sweet, vanilla-rich flavor.

This is a bio and free trade chocolate bar from Max Havelaar. Tastewise it’s average, but you can feel righteous eating it.

Swiss Army brand chocolate with guarana, in Survival portions (50 grams, half the size of a regular bar). Obviously aimed at the tourist trade, but nice design anyway!

Villars is a more upmarket brand, and they make terrific, creamy milk chocolate. My mother’s favorite! This is a half-size bar, but they make bigger bars too. The design is very Swiss-cliché, but we will forgive them for that.

Another Villars - milk chocolate with little bits of coffee in it! I love this one so much, it’s a good thing it’s a tad too expensive to buy every day.

Finally, this is not strictly a milk chocolate bar, but it is very creamy and very intense. It’s a house brand bar from Sprüngli, my favorite confectionery store. Made from Cru Sauvage varietal chocolate from Bolivia. The truffles are even more intense, but they go off very quickly (after a week the flavor is already rather faded), so these bars are more durable. Sprüngli online shop.

These chocolate bars are not edible. They’re actually an ad for Lindt chocolates, near the Central tram stop in Zürich.

I have often wondered what it would be like if those bars were real…

(Sidenote: For a while, I was contemplating putting up yet another blog dedicated just to Swiss chocolate. But, my waistline and my teeth told me that the necessary research would be too much for them. So I’ll just have to confine myself to the occasional chocolate outburst here.)

More chocolatey photos in my Chocolate! flickr set.
More chocolate related articles.

Japanese Valentine's Day chocolate giving customs in miniature

maki — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:08:16 +0100

As I wrote about last year, Valentine’s Day in Japan is fraught with social stress. Somehow, the chocolate manufacturers have managed to convince the whole society that a girl or woman can’t just give chocolates to the ones they love. (And it’s only the women who give chocolates in Japan on the 14th, not men, unlike other countries.) She must also give giri choco, or ‘obligation chocolates’, to people she ‘owes’; bosses, teachers, and fathers-in-law.

Now you can see this kind of social giving in miniature! Re-ment, the maker of amazingly detailed diecast miniatures which I’ve also written about before, has this set of two types of chocolates: Honmei or giri?! (Your real target, or obligation?!) The caption says this:

Chocolate assortment: The present for the boss is a chocolate assortment that we all chipped in for. The boss is quite a gourmet, so we couldn’t just get any old thing, but this makes the grade doesn’t it?

Handmade chocolate cake: A cake I’m proud of, that uses Belgian couverture lavishly. Tonight I’m inviting him (my boyfriend) to my room, for a Sweet Valentine’s Party.

I do agree that handmade is the ultimate luxury these days, because time is more precious than money! But…does this mean that if your Japanese girlfriend gives you a storebought box of chocolates, that she doesn’t really care for you? You decide.

The Honmei or giri?! set is part of the Zeitaku Sweets (luxurious or beautiful sweet things) collection. You can get it from J-List or eBay (where merchants often sell individual sets instead of a whole collection). But beware…Re-ment collecting is very addictive.

Uh..uh...beetle larvae shaped chocolates

maki — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:39:06 +0100

Chocolate. It’s such a lovely, malleable substance. It can be shaped into anything really. Anything.

But, one wonders what kind of twisted mind came up with this idea…chocolates shaped like kabutomushi (rhinocerous beetle) larvae!

Avert your eyes if you are squeamish. You may not want to read this while you’re eating.

(If you’re getting here from the front page, pause and breathe in deeply before clicking that ‘continue reading’.

If you’re up to it, keep scrolling down.

(ready?)

They look somehow uh, worse, in multiples.

According to Yahoo! Japan News (Japanese), these were displayed at a ‘regional products fair’ at a department store in Akita, which is in northern Japan. They are made by a confectionery maker. They’ve been so popular at the fair that they’ve been selling out within an hour every day. Apparently they have been a big hit because they are so kimo kawaii (a combination of kimochiwarui, or ‘gross out!’ and kawaii). As a matter of fact, according to the maker’s website (Japanese of course), they have been so inundated with orders that people who order will receive the product after April.

The larvae bodies are made of milk chocolate with crunchy ‘flakes’, covered with white chocolate, with dried cuttlefish (sakiika, a popular beer snack) for the legs and orange peel for the mouth. Each one is 4.5 cm (almost 2 inches) long.

If these are too tame for you, they make them in an adult flavored version (with a rum-laced ganache). They also have some virulently colored potato grubs (imomushi), which are made of bean paste (an).

Yes I know, Japanese people are weird. Kimokawaii!

(If you are in Tokyo, it seems the maker is selling the little buggers at the Chocosweets Exhibition at Sunshine City in Toshima-ku.)

Swiss food shopping news: OEM Dolfin chocolate spotted at Coop

maki — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:31:23 +0100

(This post is mainly for my fellow Swiss-residents…though if you plan to come here soon, you may want to file it away.)

Both Coop and Migros, the two dominant supermarket chains here in Switzerland, have been trying to push pricey “gourmet” lines of food in the last couple of years. I’ve sampled them selectively - some things are worth the price, like the hearty, rough-surface spaghetti from the Migros Sélection line that I use for spaghetti Bolognese. So far, nothing from Coop’s Fine Food line has grabbed me, but I think that’s changed now…because I spotted a chocolate which I’m positive is an OEM version of one of my favorite exotic-flavor chocolate bars, Dolfin Masala chocolate.

It has the same plastic-and-paper bag-shaped packaging that is sealed with a sticker. It says it’s made in Belgium. Most of all, it tastes just the same! They had Earl Grey Tea and Mint flavors too, which I haven’t tried yet but sound quite Dolfin-like.

So if you are in Switzerland and haven’t been able to get to Globus easily to grab a Dolfin, try your local Coop! (Note that Coop doesn’t have their Fine Food line in all their stores. Try a major one. We got this at the Bahnhofbrücke store in Zürich.)

(Though part of me rather wonders why they went to a Belgian chocolatier for their ‘gourmet’ chocolate bars, with so many wonderful artisanal chocolatiers here in Switzerland…)

Swiss Chocolate junk mail

maki — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:53:31 +0200

Normally, all the junk mail we get goes straight to the trash. Not these things we got in our mailbox yesterday though.

These are two full-size bars of Cailler (Nestlé) milk chocolate. No messing about with tiny sample sizes here.

Last year, Nestlé messed up things royally by changing the packaging of their Cailler chocolate bars. The re-purposed packaging was bulky, made of plastic, and design wise didn’t do much for most people either, despite the fact that it was designed (with much fanfare) by a French architect who was a buddy of then-CEO Nelly Wenger.

In Switzerland, trash disposal is a big issue. For one thing, people have to pay for official trash bags (which are tiny by U.S. standards) to put their garbage out in, otherwise it’s not collected. Plus, even in the big cities like Zürich trash is only collected at the most twice per week - in most places it’s just once a week. Rules and regulations for disposing of different kinds of trash are quite complicated too. That means that everyone tries to squeeze and compact their trash down as much as possible, and also tries not to produce much. In light of that, putting a simple chocolate bar in a bulky clear plastic casing instead very compactable paper just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

The result of the repacking was a disaster. They lost a huge percentage of the domestic Swiss chocolate market to rivals like Lindt and Frey. Then, they had to backtrack on everything and re-re-design their packaging. Nelly Wenger has since retired, ostensibly for health reasons (she had cancer), but people still speculate that the packaging fiasco pushed her towards the exit door.

But anyway, I guess now they are trying to woo back the consumers. I’m all for free chocolate, so woo me away. The soft-sell worded letter accompanying the chocolate wanted to just let us know that the ‘recipe for this Cailler Milk Chocolate has not changed since 1904’. Good to know. And the new packaging is nicely understated, and more importantly, made of plain, scrunchable paper.

I have to say though the Cailler Milchschokolade is a bit too heavy on the vanilla for me. There are so many varieties of just plain milk chocolate bars in Switzerland that one is just spoiled for choice.

(I think we were only supposed to get one bar, but somehow ended up with two. Hooray for postal mistakes!)

Oh no! A chocolate shortage?

maki — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:56:46 +0100

My friends Alan and Mimi from Cornwall alerted me to this alarming article in the Independent. Could we be facing a chocolate shortage?

According to the article,

…chocoholics should brace themselves. Fears over a global chocolate shortage have sparked a run on the dark stuff on world cocoa markets that has pushed the price up of cacao beans (used to make cocoa) to their highest level for more than two years […]

The price of cocoa futures, which is how the beans are traded on world commodity markets, has climbed steadily since last November, reviving fears of the cocoa crisis of 2002 that forced major manufacturers such as Nestlé to hike the price of some of its chocolate bars.

The article even implies that the growing popularity of dark chocolate, which uses proportionately more cacao mass than milk chocolate, could be contributing to the chocolate shortage.

Of course, a price hike is probably not going to affect the buying habits of chocoholics anywhere, and it’s highly unlikely we will actually experience a real chocolate shortage. (Imagine the outrage! The riots! Shock, horror!) Would you hesitate to buy your favorite chocolate bar even if it went up in price? I wouldn’t.

I’ve grown to appreciate dark chocolate more and more these days, especially since a lot of small chocolatiers in Switzerland have been cranking out some very interesting chocolates with a vengeance. Swiss chocolatiers were a bit late on the dark chocolate bandwagon but they are compensating for that now.

But I I have to say that, while the dark thrill of high-cocoa content dark chocolate is great, I enjoy milk chocolate just as well. The best milk chocolate, and by that I mean the best Swiss milk chocolate, melts like a creamy, soft cloud in your mouth. The article quotes the head of the Chocolate Society (!) who says, “With dark chocolate you are tasting the cocoa, whereas with milk you are tasting the recipe.” I agree with that totally.

The ideal combination is a piece of intense, dark, spine-tingling chocolate, teamed with a creamy smooth milk chocolate, perhaps with a cup of coffee. Excuse me as I make a late-night chocolate run to the kitchen…

Shopping @ Just Hungry

maki — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:11:47 +0100

When you shop at the Just Hungry affiliate stores, you help to support the site while getting stuff you want at no extra cost to you! It’s a win-win situation!

I own, have used, or have eaten, every item that I review individually. When it comes to kitchen equipment, most of the things you see listed are items that I use all the time in my kitchen and can recommend wholeheartedly. Occasionally I will list an item that’s not exactly the same as the one I own, but is very similar. I’ve been a satisfied customer of all the stores listed here. On the rare occasion that I’ve had a problem, I’ve always gotten good service.

The Amazons

The Amazon.com aStore: Kitchen equipment, books, DVDs and more from the main U.S. Amazon store.
The Amazon.co.jp Instant Store (same as astore, different name). Here are my recommendations for food-oriented Japanese books, magazines and DVDs. They do ship internationally!
New! The Amazon.co.uk aStore, for UK and Europe based readers. On the books page I’ve stuck to listing great books that are published in the UK but not yet in the US or Canada. The kitchen wares page is for UK readers only.

J-List/JBox for Japanese goodies

JList.com - “Your Friend in Japan” is a great source for cute and weird Japanese snacks as well as bento supplies and such. They ship internationally, of course! They do sell some ‘adult’ oriented stuff too, though it’s easy to avoid that if you want to, and there is an age check in place.

Click here to browse J-List

Japancentre.com

As of April 2008, we are very happy to welcome Japan Centre in London as a premium sponsor of Just Hungry and Just Bento. Japan Centre has one of the best online grocery shopping websites out there - well organized with clear descriptions. I’ve been a satisfied customer for a long time, way before they became sponsors. If you are in the UK or Europe and are looking for Japanese ingredients, be sure to give them a try! Here’s their delivery area for food items. They deliver non-food items worldwide, including bento items from Daiso.

YesAsia

YesAsia, based in Hong Kong, is a great source for people looking for a single book, DVD, CD and so on in several East Asian languages, including Japanese of course.

Confiseries Sprüngli, the best chocolates and macaroons in Switzerland

Confiserie Sprüngli is a Zürich institution. I’m a huge fan of their chocolates and other goodies, as as I’ve written about before. I prefer them over the better known (outside of Switzerland anyway) rival in town whose name starts with a T. And yes, they do ship worldwide!

Click here for Sprüngli Worldwide
If you live in Switzerland, click here.

Reference

Looking for Japanese food or kitchen supplies? Try the Worldwide Japanese grocery (and supply) store list!

Should you shop for your Japanese books and other media at Amazon, J-List, YesAsia or somewhere else? See my article about shopping for Japanese language media online.

Bittersweet Valentine memories, mostly sweet

maki — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:45:10 +0100

Happy Valentine’s Day! February the 14th may mean flowers, a romantic dinner, or promises you don’t intend to keep for other people, but to me it will always the Day Of Chocolate.

Valentine’s Day is a very odd and overly commercialized day in Japan, where the giving and receiving of chocolate doesn’t have that much to do with romance. Females are made to feel obligated to hand out chocolates to people they don’t care about, such as teachers and bosses, while males anxiously wait to see if they get ‘enough’ chocolates to satisfy their egos. There are whole lines of inexpensive chocolate products suitable for giving, called giri choco (obligation chocolate). Unlike in the Western world, it’s not a day for men to give something to their female love interests. (March 14th, called “White Day”, has been sort of artificially designated as the males-give-back-to-females day.)

Still, some people do retain some of the romantic intent of Valentine’s, especially younger women and girls. Telling a boy you like him is difficult in any society, but it’s really pretty hard in a society where being open with your feelings is not traditionally encouraged. The inability to tell that special boy/girl about ones feelings for him/her forms the crux of a lot of the plots of shoujo manga, manga for girls. Telling someone about your feelings is a huge deal, called kokuhaku, a word that also means to confess (as in confess to a crime). Valentine’s Day is supposed to be one day when a girl can safely kokuhaku her feelings, acccompanied by a beaitufully wrapped, non-obligation chocolate.

I braved a chocolate-sweetened kokuhaku twice. Once when I was 14, to the boy that both my best friend and I had a big crush on for a year; then later in senior high school, when I was 16. Neither kokuhaku lead to anything, sadly, but I still remember the nervous anticipation of choosing the chocolate, and the thrill and fear of giving it. (Both times the wrapped chocolate was placed in the boy’s shoebox ( getabako), the traditional postbox at any Japanese school.)

Both of those boys are now probably married with kids somewhere in Japan. I don’t even remember their names anymore…isn’t it weird how we forget?

For an exaggerated yet sometimes very realistic view of high school romance a la Japan, His and Her Circumstances, aka KareKano, is a very popular manga series that is available in English. There was also a short lived anime series, though the story of that ends rather abruptly around volume 6 or 7 of the original manga. And, if you’re out to impress your sweetie with something handmade and chocolate, check out the posts tagged chocolate here.

(* Bonus question: What movie did the line “flowers, chocolate, promises you don’t intend to keep” come from?)