You probably know that they do Valentine’s Day a little differently in Japan than in the West. Here, Feb. 14th is a day for women and girls to give chocolate to men and boys, and all throughout Japan, millions of fathers, husbands, boyfriends and would-be-boyfriends look forward to scoring some chocolatey goodness. In Japan, you never receive a gift without giving one in return, called o-kaeshi, and March 14 has been designated as “White Day” when males give something back to females who gave them chocolate the month before. (In South Korea they’ve taken this a step further with “Black Day” on April 14th, a day when single males who didn’t receive chocolate bitterly eat black noodles, wallowing in their single-ness.)

In case you’d like to know the history of Valentine’s Day in Japan, I’ll tell you. The first Valentine’s Day advertisement in Japan appeared in Showa 11 (1936), when a chocolate shop in Kobe called Morozoff promoted its wares as being perfect for lovers to enjoy together. World War II got in the way, and it wasn’t until after the war that people could think about anything as frivolous as chocolate.

In 1958, the manager of the Isetan department store in Shinjuku got the idea of having a Western-style Valentine’s Day chocolate sale, but it was a total flop — they sold just five boxes of chocolates!

Attempts to raise awareness of the day continued with poor results, but in the 1970s, chocolate maker Morinaga hit on the idea to promote Valentine’s Day as a day for women to give chocolate to boys and confess their love, and the rest is history.

Currently, 60% of females in Japan report giving chocolate to someone, which makes for a lot of happy fathers, husbands, boyfriends and would-be-boyfriends.