14th February is St.Valentine’s Day.
I don’t know how Western people celebrate it, however, in Japan it is the time for everyone to become chocolate mania.
Some people give chocolate to their true love.
For the others it is the day to distribute chocolate to their family, friends, co-workers, customers, teachers, seniors, as well as to themselves. Also men buying chocolates for themselves these days.
Department stores hold a chocolate fair in which many chocolate shops set up booth, and make colorful catalogues to attract customers.
There we can get novel, high quality chocolate from all over the world, such as Swiss, Belgium, Italy, France, Britain, and even from Arab countries.
This year, although the state of emergency over coronavirus are being declared, department stores hold chocolate fairs and I have been to one of these.
There I got a box of Belgium chocolate and English chocolate bars.
A quarter-century ago a Swiss friend of mine took me to a chocolate shop in Zurich.
Among a lot of chocolate shops in Switzerland, that shop attracted a lot of local people.
There I obtain many kinds of chocolate for reasonable price. I remember I got a large package of truffle chocolate.
Besides truffle, I got a bar of ginger chocolate at that shop.
While we have various kinds of sweets containing ginger, I have never seen ginger chocolate bars in Japan.
At first I was surprised at its distinctive taste. In the end I became addicted to it.
I have tried to make some by myself to find it not easy to prepare ginger with satisfactory feel and taste.
Then, whenever I go to Western countries, I look for ginger chocolate bars.
When the pandemic is over and we can travel freely, I like to go traveling to seek for bars of ginger chocolate.
