Japanese Valentine's Day Will Be an Orgy of Chocolate Ramen and Woman-Hating

Valentine's Day is a massive, red velvet hubbub in the US: heart-shaped boxes taking over your local big-chain drug store, vacant-eyed heart-holding teddy bears filing down weary conveyer belts at great speed, a shower of glittery greeting cards flying off of shelves. As we tend to be with most things, Americans are a little nuts about this super-commercial holiday in the name of love. But this Valentine's Day, Japan, a fellow nation of crowded cities and high-octane shopping, is really going for it—in every direction at once.

While we typically think of Valentine's Day as the time for even the laziest of boyfriends to step up their game and come up with a bouquet or aforementioned faux-silk candy cornucopia, women are the bearers of gifts when it comes to Valentine's Day in Japan. It's the ladies who buy fabulously expensive, coffee-table-sized boxes of chocolates for their beloved when February 14th rolls around. Men can just recline on their sofas, fingers laced behind their heads, and count down the minutes until they're handfed overpriced truffles from department stores (until the 15th, that is, when White Day dictates that they reciprocate with other sweet edibles or some saucy lingerie).

And chocolate in Japan doesn't come cheap. Department store Takashimaya, for example, does an entire floor-sized exhibition called "Amour du Chocolat," where a formidable assortment of chocolates can easily cost several Benjamins. A 2014 report found that 25 percent of Japan's total annual chocolate sales are reaped on Valentine's Day.

And their February affinity for all things chocolate extends even into their decidedly savory cuisine. Ramen chain Menya Musashi, for example, offers a frankly rather frightening-sounding chocolate ramen this time of year. As a collaboration with Lotte Confectionery—makers of Choco Pies, Ghana bars, and those cute little koala-shaped cookies filled with chocolate cream—Menya Musashi is offering the "Tsuke Ghana," a tsukemen-style ramen (a.k.a. dipping ramen) that has chocolate mixed directly into the stock. Apparently, this particular version of their seven-year-strong chocolate ramen tradition has more chocolate in it per serving than any previous incarnations.

In essence, you're dipping ground pork, burdock, and noodles into a bath of veal stock and diluted hot cocoa. If you're all alone in Tokyo this Valentine's Day and seeking to simultaneously meat-load, carb-load, and sugar-load in a personal high-calorie festival of sorrow, the Tsuke Ghana is the answer.

But not everyone in Japan is totally elated about the nation's frenetic chocolate orgy. A group of single Japanese men who read somewhat like our nation's own woman-hating, crying-while-masturbating "incel" movement) has declared war on the "oppressive chocolate capitalists" currently dominating their homeland. The organization, Kakuhido—whose name apparently literally translates to "Revolutionary Alliance of Men whom Women Find Unattractive"—is currently planning a march against all of this filthy talk of love and candy in Tokyo's crowded Shibuya district.

Founded in 2006, the "Alliance's" central argument is "that being unpopular with girls is a class issue," and was loosely inspired by Marx's oft-imitated Communist Manifesto. The Shibuya demonstration will include chants about the holiday's focus on consumerism ("Flirting is terrorism!") and the general evils of the love-centric holiday (and their exclusion from it). Seeing as the Japanese already aren't getting laid, these guys—especially after joining this vocally charming group—seem to think they're better off with body pillows. If you can't join the cuties being showered with truffles, beat them.

Come tomorrow, the Kakuhido might argue that the chocolate ramen was terrible, sure, but there certainly wasn't enough of it.