Although Valentine's Day is celebrated in Japan, it is not a day of giving candy willy-nilly, nor is it a day for the exchange of chocolates between couples only. Instead, Valentine's Day is about the exchange of giri-choco, "obligation chocolate," which sounds like a dream come true ("Hand over that truffle or face estrangement from society!") until you find out women are supposed to give chocolate to the men they work with, but not the other way around. For the sake of fairness, another holiday was invented called White Day, exactly one month later, when men give chocolates to women, but I don't think it's actually fair, because first, white chocolate is the tradition on White Day and a piece of white chocolate is simply not suitable recompense for a nice milk or dark giri-choco in my opinion, and second, I will be in Los Angeles on March 14th and therefore will not receive my socially-obligated chocolate.

This seemed reason enough to buy three kinds of chocolate for myself.

Dark ("bitaa") chocolate is popular in Japan right now, and I think it has something to do with this new Japanese diet fad involving the consumption of 50 grams of dark chocolate every day as a way to lost weight. The main benefit I see to this diet is the sudden prominence of dark chocolates from all over the world which I, a non-dieter, can purchase and eat in over-50-gram servings. With so many choices now available, I feel it is necessary to research by buying several different kinds of dark chocolate at once, then deciding which I like best, then eating all of them, even the ones I didn't like best. Atkins schmatkins, the dark chocolate diet rocks.

My intensive research has led to the following conclusions:

1. My choco-enjoyment level peaks at around 75% cacao.

2. Japanese chocolate is chalky and terrible, even when the package says, "This chocolate is particular about especially materials. Exquisite combination is characteristic of it."

3. Russian chocolate is appealingly packaged, but only so-so tasting.

4. Sometimes, after eating dried scallops and beef taffy, you just want to eat candy you actually like, so even though you have a candy with a funny name sitting on your shelf, you don't review it because you know it will be gross. Instead you pretend that something is a review when actually it was just an excuse to buy and eat a lot of chocolate.