march 14th is 'white day' in japan, a kind of answer to valentine's day. see, on valentine's day, women give men chocolate. men don't have to return the gift until white day. or something. i'm not even sure what exactly the guy is supposed to give, either. some people say it's marshmallows (or marshmallow candy. which reminds me of peeps, something i never really liked.) others say it's cookies. hmm. why not chocolate? dunno.

anyway, at work most women give their male co-workers 'giri-choco', 'obligation' chocolate, that is. this year yoshi didn't receive any. usually the men take the chocolate home to their wives or girlfriends. so, i didn't get any chocolate this year. but yoshi asked me to make something for white day. actually, he asked me to make banana cake, but that's a pain, so i decided to make russian tea cakes. little white cookies, what could be more perfect for white day?



and they taste as good as they look!

i'm not sure why yoshi asked me to make something. perhaps because he doesn't get along well with the 'ladies' at work. in his group, anyway. without going into details, apparently these ladies went behind his back to complain to his boss about him, when they easily could have gone to him and worked it out. since they didn't give him any chocolate at valentine's day, maybe he's trying to out-nice them with homemade white day treats to make them feel bad.

or, he did receive giri-choco and didn't want to share it with me....