Tweet of the Week #68: The Sweet Taste of French Revolution

Valentine’s Daymeans serious business for Japanese candy makers and for good reason. This celebration of all things romantic accounts for no less than a quarter of chocolate yearly sales, a market worth a little more over ¥1 billion.

Eat my chocolate

Celebrated since 1958 in Japan, V-Day is all about Japanese women offering chocolate to their lovers and male entourage on February 14th. While their one true love receives the precious honmai-choco(true feeling chocolate), their friends and colleagues make do with giri-chocolatewhich is given out of obligation rather than love.

But Japanese style Valentine’s Day is a bittersweet deal for women, who easily end up spending thousands of yen on chocolate boxes. Their kindness is somewhat repaid on March 14th, AKA White Day, when men pay them back with gifts of their own.

However, more and more women aren’t keen to open their wallets to satisfy their male colleagues’ sweet tooth.

Is offering giri-chocolate finally a thing of the past?

Valentine’s Day is still the front runner for chocolate sales in Japan, but for how long? After two disappointing years in a row, with the market dropping respectively 6% and 3% in 2018 and 2019, Halloween is now close to snatching the first place.

While the range of valentine giftsis actually expanding, the public interest seems to have turned somewhat sour. The chocolate industry took a big hit with the growing perception that giri-chocolates are in fact, a form of power harassmentat work.

So every year, confectioners have to come up with ingenious marketing campaigns to encourage consumers to indulge their desire for sweets, whether they’re gifting the sweets to someone else or themselves.

Taste of what?!

Leveraging Japanese people’s romantic perception of France is always a good strategy to sell stuff in Japan. But we bet cake shop chain Ginza Cozy Corner’s marketing team didn’t think long enough about this advertisement campaign shared by twitter user @R_Kakiuchi_0921.

のチョコレートケーキがすぎる。

= This year’s chocolate cake is too disturbing.

A delicious pun made from the poster’s caption: 今年のチョコレートケーキは、フランスの。Translation? “This year’s chocolate cake tastes like the French revolution.”

Let us know if you have an idea of what the French revolution would taste like, we’re curious.

50 shades of taste

Meals are a way to connect with people, to learn more about a culture and talking about food is probably a universal conversation starter. So let’s focus on the word味(taste) and help you go beyond しいand うまい.

You’ll find tons of expressions very easy to remember with the word味.

味が濃い	aji ga koi	have a strong taste
味がある	aji ga aru	have flavor
味がいい	aji ga ii	have a good taste
味が薄い	aji ga usui	lightly seasoned
味がない	aji ga nai	tasteless
味が悪い	aji ga warui	unpalatable/ tastes bad

You can expand your vocabulary with the words which translates “flavor” and , for “after taste”.

風味がある	fuumi ga aru	savory
風味のない	fuumi no nai	insipid
風味をつける	fuumi o tsukeru	to season (a dish)
後味がいい	atoaji ga ii	leaves a good aftertaste in one’s mouth
後味が悪い	atoaji ga warui	leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth

By the way, when you taste a dish, you use the verbする. Quite easy to remember, isn’t it?

Now, when it comes to describing the food you can use the following adjectives:

甘い	amai	sweet
甘口	amakuchi	sweet, mild
辛い	karai	spicy
辛口	karakuchi	spicy/ dry (wine)
塩辛い (casual 塩っぱい)	shyokarai (shyoppai)	salty
酸っぱい	suppai	sour
甘酸っぱい	amasuppai	sweet and sour
甘辛い	amakarai	sweet and salty
苦い	nigai	 bitter
渋い	shibui	astringent

Additional Vocabulary

今年	kotoshi	this year
チョコレートケーキ	chokoreeto keeki	Chocolate cake
不穏すぎる	fuon sugiru	too disturbing
フランス革命	furansu kakumei	French revolution
本命チョコ	honmei choko	Chocolate you offer to the person you’re romantically involved with or you love romantically
義理チョコ	giri choko	Chocolate you offer to friends or colleague as a “duty”
バレンタイン・デー	barentain dee	Valentine’s Day

For more on learning Japanese