I started out this Valentine’s Day with an hour and a half in the dentist’s chair, so even though I came home to chocolates from my sweetheart, it will be an hour or so before I can enjoy them. In the meantime, I got a kick out of this story in The Jakarta Post about Indonesian teenagers picking up on Valentine’s Day from Japanese manga. That means they learn the peculiarly Japanese version, in which the girls give the boys chocolates. A month later, on White Day, the boys are supposed to reciprocate. However, I can’t imagine that Valentine’s Day features as largely in, say, Naruto, as in Fruits Basket, so I wonder how the boys know what to do.
Of course, we have the obligatory disapproving comment from a local grownup:
“For Indonesian teenagers, especially Muslims, it is not necessary to celebrate Valentine’s Day,” said Dapiarso, chairman of the school board of State High School No. 47 in Tanah Kusir, South Jakarta.
“Besides, it is not part of our culture, it’s a celebration that could (in the end) make free sex legal. So it’s better if we don’t celebrate it at all,” he said.
You can practically hear the kids muttering, “If only it were that easy!”
