Japan’s Valentine’s at Christmas

A guy will take a girl out for a lavish dinner and buy her gifts with the hope that she can read between the lines

If Jesus walked with me along the streets of Tokyo today, he would be impressed by the way Japanese are preparing for his birthday:

Christmas trees, Santa Claus, flickering lights, carols etc like there was some display competition going on.

Their Santa Claus, known as Hoeiosho — who is actually a Buddhist monk who gives children gifts with similar tricks, is also being dusted for action.

What Jesus would not know is that for most of these Buddha and Shinto believers, Christmas is not associated with a virgin lady who gave birth to a bouncing boy without a human father — who, the Bible insists, eventually became Him. Kurisumasu, as the Japanese call it, is a day of lovers where singles find lots of problems as society begins to point fingers at who is ‘floating’.

Lovers exchange gifts and go out to dinner at expensive hotels, thereby announcing to the whole world that they are an item. I was actually going to say it is a bit like Valentine’s Day but I have changed my mind; it is their Valentine’s Day.

And like for VD in Uganda, many young people are scared. When God (or was it Buddha?) was creating the Japanese, he totally missed the romantic circuit.

As a result, they are a people who praise rice with more affectionate words than lovers. Love and sex are never invited to a gathering of societal needs and that might easily explain why they are wealthy and live long: They do not waste time hitting each other with iron bars.

I always see youngsters moving out as couples and when you are in Tokyo, you cannot fail to wonder why their birthrates are in the negative.

But my friends in Kyoto University say the youth hang out for a million years before they express love to each other.

They said the first time Japanese express love is very embarrassing for either sex so they prefer to postpone it till, if they are lucky, death comes before they have to say it.

One university professor confessed he has never told his wife that he loves her. “I am shy,” he says.

For the youth, it goes though an elaborate metamorphosis like a mosquito taking its time to move from egg till it is adult enough to infect some Ugandan with malaria.

First, the boy spends months reading self-help books on love and surfing Dr Love columns and magazines to get tips on how to invite a girl for a romantic outing.

Actually, their biggest problem is their peers who convince them it has never been heard of for a boy to confess love to a girl.

Their dads probably do not help either because they have never said any romantic word except to a rice bowl or a glass of Osake (potent liquor).

In the end, they take a short cut; they just buy an expensive present and hope that the girl gets the point.

If she accepts it, the boy also gets the point. Isn’t that lovely? Then they start hanging out in pairs talking about how rice is delicious till one of then gets the guts to write an SMS with such romantic words as “Thanx for last night”.

They are still more comfortable communicating on phone even when they are holding hands in a dark corner.

Then when they face each other, they get embarrassed. So if I don’t return soon, know that some world needs me more than another.

This Christmas, some boy will buy some girl a costly present. He will then take her to a nice dinner at a restaurant at a cost of up to sh800,000 per person.

Luckily enough, not many girls can turn down the offer at Christmas because none wants to be seen alone that day.

“He is dropping hints and so am I,” Yoshida, a 20-year-old university student, told me. “I will know soon at Christmas. I want him to buy me a handbag of sh600,000 and then take me out.”

She added that she is also prepared to spend up to sh500,000 on his New Year present if he survives the Christmas move. In her company was Namatame, 23, another university friend, who says she has caught no boy fusing around her.

“I feel like a complete loser this year. No guy. It is a waste of a whole year.”
I promised her tips with an assurance that my love wisdom is older than the Egyptian pyramids.