Valentine's and White Day

I'm a teacher in Japan and wanted to share some of my recent experiences.

On 2/13 my first year student Yuka-chan said "Sensei I have something for you tomorrow, please wait!" so of course I was very excited. It's my first Valentine's Day in Japan and Yuka is my favorite student.

So the next day I get some giri choco from the staff, but then I also get...





Yuka-chan gave me the one on the right. It says ほんの気持ち (hon'no kimochi) "a little feeling." She said itsumo arigatou. Later after school I saw her running at practice and ran with her for awhile. It was nice.

The surprise twist was 3rd year Moe-chan. She gave me the homemade brownie and muffin on the left, and said (In English) "Will you be m-my... v... va..." and then she turned away and said "Mou~" and ran off. Her friend Mitsuki apologized for her and ran off to find her.


So in an effort to turn my school into a Yuritopia I will be making homemade chocolates for these girls for White Day. I plan on making truffles. I've never done anything with chocolate before, so I'm pretty nervous!! Does anybody have any surefire recipes? It's tough because I don't have an oven in Japan, and pretty much all the sweets I've ever made have been baked. (I think my microwave doubles as an oven but I don't know how to use it haha). Anyway, suggestions and tips are welcome and I'll update in a few weeks with White Day news :)

had to google white day.

i have no experience in making truffles, have made cookies.

i would stick with stuff you have made before or make some samples before white day

I have no advice for the chocolate stuff but wanted to comment about how surprised I am that what you described seems to have come right from an anime XD

Yeah, my life is a little bit anime now :)

Sounds awesome! XD

I almost dont believe you...

I'm sure Chris Hansen can make an exception and come to you.

I probably wouldn't either, but feel free to ask me anything about Kitadaito or teaching in Japan

I have to know... was more l or more r like?

Her pronunciation is pretty good actually!

I made some truffles to practice and shared them with another teacher who gave me the thumbs up. So now it's just the wait for White Day... :)

Mou... So jelly.



I only asked because for me normally my name magically gains R's I didn't even know existed haha :p

here we go, the stunning conclusion.

So I decided to make truffles because it's easy. I went with 72% cacao and bought pecans and almonds for two different types of toppings. I did a practice run about two weeks ago and let my JTE try them and she gave me the thumbs up, so I was ready to go! It's a two day process so I got started on Sunday, let the choco balls rest in the fridge overnight, then applied the topping yesterday. I ended up with these Truffles!




I owed chocolates to 5 girls: Mitsuki, Moe, Sarina, Megumi, and Yuuka. I also wanted to give one each to all the women teachers. So that's a lot of truffles! I did a double batch. For the five special girls I put three each in little containers and tied it with (pretty shitty, but all I could find) ribbon.

Four of them just say their name and "ganbare!" and stuff like that but for Yuuka's I admit I went out of my way a little and... I'm sorry, she just makes me feel really happy and my heart kinda swells up when she smiles so I wanted to do my best? The Japanese isn't perfect I'm sure because I went with my heart and didn't get someone to check it.




Yuuka is on the student council so she and the 3 boys were greeting students outside the school. I said "Thank you for Valentine's Choco. Happy White Day!" and handed it to her right there at the start of the day, causing quite a commotion. I was pretty embarrassed though so I rushed off and kind of peeked to see her reading the note, but I couldn't bear to watch anymore so I just went inside.

The rest of school went normally. Tuesdays I also teach Juku so I had her after school, and since it's the last week before spring vacation we were basically just playing games. She finally told me
"Oh, sensei! Choco... very delicious!"
"Ah! Yokatta ne!"
"Note wa... very good." (thumbs up)
"Yay! Ureshii desu~"
(Most of our conversations are basically her bad English and my bad Japanese, haha)

Anyway, here's Yukapi (she approved of my nickname attempt!) kicking my ass at Jenga



Anyway that's White Day! It was a little anticlimactic, sorry. Yuuka is a second year as of the end of this week, so there's plenty of time to get to know her better though. I'll check back in next Valentine's Day! :)

Wow you were actually telling the truth.

Did you tell them that you posted this to an online forum of an ero-manga site for english viewers called fakku.net?

of course! (not)

I do wear my Fakku shirt around though :)

(also I can't believe you thought I was lying!! I'm so hurt)