White Day (ホワイトデー); patisserie Sadaharu AOKI Paris, Roppongi, Tokyo

It's that time of the year again.  White Day.  What is "White Day" you ask?  Well, White Day is the male equivalent to Valentine's Day in Japan.  The Japanese did it again; that is,  interpreted something their own way like their 119 for emergency calls, use of "blue" to describe "green "traffic signals, and Santa Claus crucified on the cross (I've actually only heard about this).  The Japanese have bifurcated (look that up in the dictionary) Valentines Day into two holidays.  On Valentine's Day here, February 14, girls give chocolates to guys, and on March 14, guys return the favor to girls that they got chocolate from.  Both of these days fall/fell on Saturdays in 2015 so it means leaving chocolate with its recipient on a Friday.

This tradition started in the 70's from what I understand from Mr. Wikipedia.  Great feat of entrepreneurship by the candy companies since the Valentine's Day/White Day gifts here are much much more than those cheapy paper Spiderman valentines with phrases like "I Caught You In My Love Web" or "My Spidey Sense Tingles When You Are Around"  and those chalk-flavored candy hearts. Yeah, they definitely are high-fiving each other for creating two holidays.

Guys receive one of two types of chocolate,　本命チョコ　honmei choco or 義理チョコ giri choco. 　The former is for your love interest or at least someone you like a lot.  The latter is obligatory chocolate.  Luckily, since girls dictate the chocolate giving, as a guy, I only have to reciprocate based on what I received.  So naturally, that means lots of giri choco!  I shouldn't feel that bad though.  At least I got chocolate.  Had this been my elementary school days or junior high school days, maybe even my high school days, I'd get little or no chocolate except from my mom.  Sad panda indeed.  Now I got a wife, a mother-in-law, daughters, secretaries and co-workers!

So where should I get my White Day gifts?  Hmmmm....  For a fleeting second, the Chinese in me was thinking of going to the convenient store and getting the money saving stuff.  However, my office is in Roppongi Hills, a very plush area of Tokyo, and well, that just wouldn't be acceptable.  So I chose here: patisserie  Sadaharu AOKI Paris in nearby Midtown.  The chocolate is beautiful and the girls dig it.

Here are some pics:

This is where it's at.

Look at them... Truly little chocolate pieces of artwork.

Some of my purchase.

I ended up getting macaroons and some chocolate cookies.  To be honest, they were a bit pricey, but I do greatly enjoy having the company of my co-workers.  AOKI's chocolate truly is artwork.  

There was a time when I used to buy chocolate for my wife from AOKI and we would savor each piece (I'd only buy (or could afford) 3-4 pieces at a time).  The chocolate was a treat truly worth being savored.  What I mean is that it is extremely smooth chocolate with a very delicate flavor.  The slight flavor is real and it does not have the artificial feel with regular store-bought chocolate.    Really good stuff, a really nice treat for hard work.  If you've never had luxury time chocolate, I definitely recommend trying.  Prior to my experience, I really could not tell the different between Hershey kisses and chocolate from a place like AOKI.  For the presentation and flavor, I give AOKI 5 five cocoa beans out of 5 cocoa beans.