Musings on a quiet Thursday afternoon

The staff room is unearthly quiet now... I am the only person at my desk and Tom is away at the lounge reading a book. The rest of my colleagues are in a meeting, and what a sharp contradiction it is from this morning. This morning, and yesterday, there was a great flurry of activity going on. People were running helter-skelter, rushing to get everything ready for this morning's big day. It is Kouhoku's Speech Day, and this is unlike the Speech Days I have attended back home. There is no giving out of any awards and this Speech Day is as literal as the word 'speech' means. This morning, so many so many students took their turns to give speeches to the whole school, and the whole school just sat quietly to listen to all the speeches. I did too, trying to understand, cos they were mostly in Japanese and there was only a 5-minute break in the 3-hour long event.

Yup, and Valentine's Day is round the corner and this day is celebrated in quite a different fashion here because instead of the guys showering the girls with gifts, it is the opposite! On Feb 14, the fairer sex gives chocolates to the men, and there are basically 2 types of chocolates they give - the 義理 (giri=obligatory) chocolate and the 本命 chocolate. The honmei chocolates are given to that special someone the woman is serious about.

Well, one interesting thing I have read about is that if I give giri chocolates to my superiors or bosses, they are expected to return another giri gift to me exactly one month later on Mar 14, and this day is known as the 'White Day'. Haha, what is interesting is that this returned giri gift (need not be chocolates) should be twice the value of my original gift. Haha!

And again, this is an example of how the Japanese make everything very unique. White Day! I mean, I have never heard of White Day till recently and when I did some reading on White Day, I learnt that it's for the guys to reciprocate and to return chocolates or a gift to the ladies who blessed them in the first place. At the end of the day, or should I say the month, not only is everyone happy, the departmental stores and chocolate manufacturers would be beaming from ear to ear because of a sharp rise in profit!

And do you know how White Day came about? It was believed that a certain confectionary, a marshmellow-manufacturing company, took advantage of the Japanese feelings of obligation and created this day in the 1960s. The name came about because marshmellows were white and fluffy back then. This day gives the men an opportunity to return a gift to their female friends. What sharp business acumen yah? Though White Day is still not as popular as V-Day, it is yet another money-making prospect!

Haha... ok, I have almost finished this entry. Tomorrow, the O-Level results will be released and I will be very excited to hear about how 5D has done for this exam. I pray they will all do very well and that all of them will go on to enter the college or polytechnic of their choice. :)