Only the men say “domo arigato” on Valentine’s Day. That’s because in Japan, only the gals have to give gifts while the guys just wait for the presents to start a-pouring.

“Valentine’s Day is more about the girls than about the boys,” Arisa Noma said. “It’s a chance for us to enjoy being a girl, giggling about boys and baking sweets. It’s a chance for us to get over being shy and somehow express our affection toward them.”

In essence, Valentine’s Day in Japan is a day that a woman shows her renewed affection to her boyfriend, fiancé or husband. As for the single lady, it’s her chance to confess her love to the guy she’s lost sleep over.

But the tradition of female gift-giving on Valentine’s is not just about her one and only. She’s also expected to provide sweets for her daddy, brothers, coworkers and male friends – anyone and everyone to whom she owes a social debt.

There is a notion of honmei and giri in Japanese culture, the prior signifying passion and the latter duty. Though getting to the boy of her dreams is a girl’s main concern on Valentine’s, making sure that she also gives sweets to the other important male figures in her life is just as important.

“A girl who promptly gives giri gifts is seen as kind and charming,” said Chika Morishita. “We understand that, in our culture, the boys are expecting to receive something from us, and we comply. It’s actually really fun – we get to show off our baking skills, and the boys get to have fun competing with each other to see who gets the most sweets.”

Though this one-sided gift giving affair may seem like an unfair situation for the ladies, she gets her share of goodies exactly one month later on March 14. The day is deemed White Day, a day when males return the favor and bestow gifts to females, both honmei and giri.

There is a catch to this, though: if the guy doesn’t like the gal who gave him the honmei gift on Valentine’s, he doesn’t have to give anything back.

So worst come to worst, the gal, after waiting anxiously for a month to hear back from her dream boy whom she gave her honmei gift to, visits heartbreak hotel as the clock strikes midnight and White Day is over without word from him.

“Sometimes I wish the guys would take the first step in this process,” Noma said, “with teddy bears and flowers, like in Western culture. That might be kinda nice.”

But the gals aren’t the only ones who experience anxiety during the season of love, said Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, Morishita’s boyfriend. A guy is likely to spend Valentine’s Day with sweaty palms, waiting to see if his crush has left him a box of sweets, he said.

And if he finds out that that the object of her affection is a different guy – then it’s time to pretend that he didn’t really care about Valentine’s in the first place, anyway.

“The Japanese are just a very shy bunch, both men and women, and we don’t express ourselves as much as people in other cultures do,” Morishita said. “So having this once-a-year occasion when we go all out and confess our feelings is really fun.”