His newest film, “The Boy and The Heron,” released in theaters with little prior announcement and promotion. Now that the director, 83, has produced another structurally complex and visually striking film — in March, it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature — avid fans and critics alike are reflecting on the transformative impacts he has left during his long, celebrated career.

Animated film far precedes Miyazaki: By the time he entered its complex world, the medium had found global success, especially thanks to animation giant Disney. Moreover, in his native Japan, animated content (commonly referred to as anime) was a beloved alternative to traditional live-action cinema, and its films and television series were — and often still are — adaptations of popular manga, or Japanese comics.

While Miyazaki may not have pioneered animated film, he has still influenced its course greatly. Beginning with Studio Ghibli’s first film, “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” (1984), Miyazaki established one of his signature storylines: following young protagonists faced with quests highlighting family, adolescence, environmentalism, war and mortality.

While “Nausicaä” is considered to be fairly graphic and violent, other Miyazaki works such as “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988) and “Ponyo” (2008) follow his classic storyline through a more lighthearted, family-friendly lens. Art of Visual Storytelling teacher Terence Kitada noted the underlying themes in Miyazaki’s works.

“Ghibli movies are not about saving an entire world or kingdom,” he said. “Sure, some are more action-oriented, but they are still stories about family, community or friendship.”

According to Japanese teacher Matt Hall, the visual aesthetics of Miyazaki’s films are integral to his success.

“In fact, a lot of people would argue that Miyazaki is not interested in the story,” Hall said. “He’s interested in the images and aesthetics he creates.”

Miyazaki’s cultivation of a traditional hand-drawn anime style has found incredible success at home and abroad. Many of his earlier films gained acclaim in Japan, and American and other Western audiences soon became familiarized with Miyazaki after “Princess Mononoke” (1997) and “Spirited Away” (2001). In 2002, the latter even became the first foreign entry to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

“(Miyazaki’s style) doesn’t differ much from the other Japanese animation studios, but he was the first to really nail it,” Hall said. “He’s been in this industry for longer than anyone else.”

Today, Western audiences enjoy anime beyond Miyazaki and Ghibli works. Series such as “One Piece” (1999) and “My Hero Academia” (2016) have reached widespread success. Additionally, the release of Ghibli’s blockbusters like “Spirited Away” and “Princess Mononoke” converged with the introduction of franchises like Yu-Gi-Oh and Hello Kitty, creating what Hall refers to as a major “2000s wave” in Japanese pop-culture popularity. Miyazaki’s works introduced Western viewers to Japanese and Asian cultural values, Kitada said.

“There’s this one five-minute scene in Ghibli’s ‘Ponyo’ where the characters make ramen together, and it’s so purposeful,” Kitada said. “It’s very logical to bring childhood memories to Japanese audiences, but I don’t know if you’d see the same thing being done in an American movie like ‘Frozen.’ In that sense, Ghibli movies expose people to Japanese values and different ways of looking at the world.”

All in all, while the popularity of anime far preceded Miyazaki’s iconic tenure with Studio Ghibli, the influence of his work is undeniable for audiences and the industry alike.

“Go around and find the best anime creators around the world and go, ‘Who is your number-one influence?’” Hall said. “I guarantee you the name that will come out is Miyazaki.”

The recruitment process relies primarily on one individual’s work: the athlete’s. Athletes seeking recruitment hope to gain colleges’ attention through attending showcase events, sharing statistics and highlights on recruiting sites, and conducting outreach to coaches through networking services like Next College Student Athlete (NCSA). Then, they may enter into direct contact with coaches who are specifically tasked with advocating their recruitment to the school’s admissions committee. Ultimately, however, there is no guarantee that these efforts will come to fruition.

Indeed, according to NCAA data, nearly 520,000 students participated in Division I, II and III sports in the 2022-23 season. This figure also includes walk-on athletes — students who join college athletic programs without prior recruitment — and students recruited from abroad, though these cases are usually far less common. That, compared with the almost eight million high school student-athletes, means only a mere 7% of student-athletes are recruited to play at the collegiate level.

While not all eight million high school student-athletes seek recruitment, those that do face a highly competitive and complex process. Unsurprisingly, then, many also fall short of this goal. Whether these students are denied on the basis of their college application, do not find an ideal match or voluntarily stop their search altogether, each has a nuanced journey and resulting perspective.

Until last semester, senior Marcello Chang had been seeking recruitment. A competitive soccer player since childhood, he — like many of his teammates and school peers — had hoped to be recruited to a top collegiate program. To that end, he followed the basic but strenuous procedure: He sent initial emails directly to programs in his freshman year, attended dozens of showcases and ID camps (showcase-like events organized by specific colleges) during sophomore and junior year, and communicated directly with coaches starting junior year.

Catching the eye of program scouts and coaches is fundamental to recruitment. Chang noted this task is both difficult and financially inequitable.

“ID camps are actually very expensive,” he said. “A lot of the time, players get recruited through these events, and if you don’t have the money for them, you’re less likely to be recruited.”

Senior Ashley Sarkosh, who until recently was actively seeking recruitment for soccer, echoed the importance of player-to-program contact.

“There is a small (and specific) demand for collegiate athletes but a great supply to choose from,” she said. “Anyone can therefore imagine that the required work to get noticed is tremendous, and you have to give it your all.”

According to Zippia, a job-search platform that includes company revenues in its database, NCSA made around $130 million dollars in revenue in 2022. While NCSA services aim to help players with recruitment outreach, they do not include other expenses such as for equipment, training, exercise regimens and showcase attendance. Some of these costs may be covered by athletes’ club teams, but players usually still pay for lodging, transportation and meals. That, combined with the average club membership price — usually in the low thousands, according to the NCSA — means a player may spend thousands of dollars attending showcases throughout high school. These showcases exist for practically all major high school sports.

In addition, the regulations and practices around recruitment can differ among sports, causing additional confusion for and inconvenience to athletes.

“Basically, coaches can’t even talk to (soccer athletes) until the summer after sophomore year, which is not the same case for other sports,” Chang said. “It almost doesn’t make sense to see prodigy football players receive offers while they are still in middle school, or even baseball players who are freshmen in high school.”

Athletes who sought recruitment also draw parallels between the competitive environments around recruitment and the college application cycle.

“Most of the time, you are talking to the same colleges as your teammates,” Chang said. “With college applications, everyone asks, ‘Where are you applying?’ and with recruitment they ask, ‘Oh, which programs are you talking to?’”

Sarkosh noticed similar patterns, fueled by the tendency of both college applicants and recruitment-seekers to maximize their outreach.

“Similar to college applications, athletes know that applying or speaking to one college isn’t enough,” she said. “They must reach out to as wide a variety of colleges as possible.”

Seeking recruitment often necessitates an even greater sacrifice: time. Between playing, recovering and communicating, athletes are often left with less time for academic and social commitments, and limited opportunities to explore other sports.

“Unfortunately, if you are trying to get recruited, you may miss time with friends and family,” Sarkosh said. “Some argue that athletes should explore more high school sports, become more well rounded and therefore save money for college.”

Indeed, what high school students may find on their social media feeds — celebratory recruitment announcements — show merely one fragment of the collegiate recruitment process. For every athlete, no matter the final recruitment destination (or lack thereof), their individual journey consists of great physical, financial and time sacrifices.

“When we see our friends on Instagram posting that they ‘signed’ to a college for a sport, we are happy and excited for them, but we may not realize all that they gave up prior to their signing,” Sarkosh said.

According to the National Federation of High School Associations, nearly 1 million male high school students played football during the 2021-22 school year. Yet increasing medical research and knowledge caused concern over the sport’s physicality.

This, perhaps, should come with little surprise: Players are constantly colliding with one another at high speeds and with significant force, either “blocking” or “tackling” to obstruct their opponents’ movement. Although players are required to wear protective gear, such as helmets and shoulder, leg and knee pads, injuries are frequent and can be dangerous.

Former junior varsity football player senior Ethan Fu cited these risks as his reason for quitting the sport.

“Given the frequency and sometimes severity of injuries, I didn’t want to get hurt and jeopardize my participation in basketball, my main sport,” he said. “When my JV team would train against varsity, I saw how much more aggressive they played, and I thought the risk was just too great.”

According to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, players are most likely to injure ligaments and muscles. Ankle, hamstring, wrist and knee sprains are fairly routine, though severe tears and breaks may also occur.

According to varsity football player senior Josh Kim, the team saw two torn anterior cruciate ligaments and a broken collarbone this past season — both injuries requiring surgery and long-term rest.

In recent years, however, medical professionals, parents and ex-players have looked beyond the purely physical repercussions of injuries. According to the NFHS, high school football players suffer an average of 11.2 concussions per 10,000 athletic exposures, defined as each individual time they play or practice football.

In the past, concussions were seen as standalone events and were treated as immediate concerns with short-term impacts. However, new research shows that concussions, especially when accumulated over time, can increase the risk of early-onset dementia, brain disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Since the human brain undergoes significant development during the teenage years, playing high school football is a direct threat to proper brain development.

Still, these brain injuries do not increase the likelihood of depression, as shown by a 2021 study published in the Frontiers in Neurology journal.

Kim also highlighted the relatively low occurrence of significant injuries compared to minor ones. “When a massive injury takes place, for example, when Damar Hamlin (of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills) went into cardiac arrest, those (injuries) are far less frequent than smaller sprains and tweaks,” he said. “And that’s why those injuries garner such media attention.”

While football has become safer in recent years — due to more emphasis on safe tackling techniques and more widespread use of protective gear — the inherently aggressive mechanisms of the game continue to cause injuries. In fact, even the use of protective gear may have unintended consequences: According to the Peltzman effect, individuals are more likely to make dangerous choices with new safety measures, since their risk perception decreases.

Though Fu stopped playing football, he is hesitant to describe the sport as “too physical” for high schoolers to play.

“I think, given the brain-development timeline, that tackle football should definitely not be played before high school,” he said. “For high schoolers, though, we are probably mentally developed enough to risk the physical and mental injuries.”

Though protective measures have come a long way, participating in football can result in both significant bodily injuries and development-hindering brain injuries. Such an assertion, however, doesn’t change much. To strap on shoulder pads under the Friday-night floodlights is, ultimately, the choice of an individual athlete and their family. The aforementioned NFHS numbers say it all — high school football saw nearly 1 million players in 2021-22, even in light of these growing concerns.

“Even after my collarbone injury, I don’t regret playing football or see the sport any different now,” Kim said. “It gave me a lot as a person, and, for me, that sort of outweighs everything else.”

This story, exemplifying the struggle between efforts for commercial development and cultural preservation, is not unique to Palo Alto — it is happening all around the world because of rapid economic growth and commercialization. Yet it is in citizens’ and policymakers’ best interests to prioritize preserving historical and cultural sites, which hold educational and economic value.

According to Palo Alto Online, as part of the agreement, Sobrato will donate $1 million to city park improvements and $4 million to the city’s affordable housing fund, repurpose a portion of the land along Matadero Creek into a public park, and create 74 affordable townhouses, all while keeping the iconic monitor roofs of the cannery. Still, most of the cannery will be gone as a result of this redevelopment.

Much of history is lost over time. There undoubtedly once existed people and civilizations of which current generations have no awareness. Yet, in addition to records and documents, physical structures provide a significant piece of historical knowledge: According to research by Greene et al. in the Education Next Journal, students who participate in field trips improve their critical thinking and increase their cultural exposure. Sites that have managed to stand the test of time, therefore, are extremely valuable — they furnish opportunities for historical and archaeological study and for society to see and touch history. While the Bayside Canning Company’s Palo Alto site seems insignificantly old when compared to sites such as the Jamestown Colony ruins or the New Mexico pueblos, it too is important: Chew’s success story as an early Asian American immigrant is unique, and it provides a valuable example of persistence in the face of adversity.

Preserving cultural sites also carries economic merits through stimulating tourism. Hearst Castle, a famous mansion built in 1919 in San Simeon, California, typifies this trend: After its owner’s death, the castle and its surrounding property were passed on to the State of California, and since 1958, it has been one of the most-visited parks in the state. According to a 2022 report by the Los Angeles Times, the park’s revenues amounted to $16.2 million in 2019 alone. While Hearst Castle may be an outlier in terms of its popularity and resulting revenue, many examples of smaller profit-operating cultural sites exist. Especially in smaller, mainly residential cities, these sites can draw in vital economic traffic: For example, thousands of tourists travel to small Charlottesville, Virginia, each year to tour Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s former home and plantation.

Some who favor development over preservation of cultural and historical sites argue that the desired replacements — usually housing or retail spaces — provide access to far more lucrative markets. According to TeamCalifornia, a nonprofit promoting business development, the California retail market pulls in nearly $573 billion annually. This, when compared to the $90 million annual revenue of California historical sites per Statista, presents development as the obvious economic choice.

Others may also claim that these sites are not necessities. Indeed, development paves way for commercial space such as supermarkets or clothing companies, whose products play a more prominent role in everyday life than, say, museums. Replacing these sites with housing renders an even more essential service — according to California’s Department of Housing and Community website, California residents face a significant housing shortage. Still, though preserving cultural sites like the Palo Alto Bayside Cannery may stand in the way of some development projects, the remaining cultural sites only make up a small portion of potential commercial spaces.

While it is now inevitable that a significant portion of Chew’s cannery will be lost, there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of buildings, nature spaces and districts that require community support to guarantee preservation. In 2021 alone, the U.S. National Register registered over 900 new protected sites. Stories like Chew’s are worth saving for future generations to experience — it will be up to everyday people to give them a voice, through lobbying, donating, visiting or simply advocating.

Since the 2020-21 school year, the counseling department has enforced a “no email” and “no drop-in” schedule-change policy for the first two weeks of school. They instead provide a Google form for students to specify which classes they wished to substitute others with, drop from or add to their schedules.

Some students went several days without a response from the department, and various upperclassmen — such as junior Jonah Weinstein — were surprised by the difficulty in changing or dropping courses this year. “Although my request was an exception because it did not fall under the form-request reasons, I didn’t expect to wait a week to get a face-to-face meeting,” Weinstein said. “Last year the process was faster for me, and my request was basically identical this year.”

Assistant Principal of Counseling Harvey Newland did not notice a major difference between this year’s scheduling complications and preceding years’. Lead Counselor David Leftwich confirmed that the number of requests this year was not an outlier and that requests were denied or accepted based on the same parameters as past years. Thus, students’ perceived difficulty most likely depended on personal experiences and the number of requests they submitted or received.

One factor that did complicate schedule changes for a limited number of students was over-enrollment in Living Skills, a semester-long ����ӰԺ graduation requirement. With administrative approval, the counseling department offered an online Living Skills course to some students, with each counselor selecting those they felt comfortable offering the course to based on their academic performance and demonstrated responsibility. “Online learning is not for everyone, and counselors wanted to do everything we could to make sure that we were intentional about the students we enrolled online,” Leftwich said.

However, the online classes began several weeks after the beginning of the school year, leaving affected students’ schedules in limbo. “I had already been in my regular Living Skills class for nearly two weeks,” senior Rohan Kancherla, who is now enrolled in the online class, said. “I was called in by the counseling office and was given an option to stay on-campus or take the online version. The whole (switch) wasn’t really an inconvenience, but it did happen completely out of the blue.”

While some students may have experienced longer wait times with changing their schedules, Leftwich noted that the current system is more efficient than the previous one. “(The old) process was cumbersome,” he said. “It involved students’ meeting with their counselors, obtaining a paper form, speaking to instructional leads. Now, (the system) is a straight shot because students don’t have to run all over the place.”

Newland sees the number of schedule changes as a positive indication of student initiative in their academic lives. “It’s always good that we have students who are reaching out and asking questions when they need it,” he said. “As administrators, we want to hear everything, and so having more responses and feedback is not necessarily a bad thing.”

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Source: Self-selected survey sent out to Gunn students by The Oracle from Sept. 8 to Sept. 15 with 158 responses

As gym-going becomes increasingly popular, it sets certain aesthetic standards. Those who don’t meet these expectations are classified as skinny and weak, or lazy and overweight. Furthermore, heading to the gym, especially with friends, can lead to unhealthy competition, harassment and bullying. These types of environments and experiences may lead to issues including insecurity, depression, steroid use, and, in extreme cases, various eating disorders, such as “reverse anorexia” — a belief that one’s body is too small or insufficiently muscular. Junior Samantha Snyder notes that this dysmorphia is often exacerbated by social media. “For other people, I’ve definitely seen (dysmorphia) as a huge source of insecurity and self-comparison, which is especially fueled by the influencers they see, who are super muscular and not actually natural,” she said.

Nutrition is often seen as the key to muscle growth and fitness. An intense focus on it, however, contributes to an unhealthy gym culture. As part of their personal fitness regimes, many students are highly cognizant of what they eat, contributing to obsessive behaviors around nutrition and more time and money spent on purchasing specific foods. Snyder, who started a personal fitness regimen several months ago, finds that unrealistic diets on social media only compound this issue. “It’s super hard to find that fine line between what you should be consuming for your own well-being and what others are recommending,” she said. “You have influencers telling you to go on carnivorous diets, you have trainers on YouTube telling you to go vegan to cut down your waist. It’s by far the most toxic aspect of gym culture.”

Toxic gym culture often prompts the overconsumption of protein to build muscle, which is shown to have damaging effects on the gastrointestinal system. This practice has been continually reinforced by the muscle-building myth that one should consume 2 grams of protein daily for each kilogram of one’s body weight. Medical centers such as the Mayo Clinic, however, suggest that individuals consume no more than 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Junior Aiden Chowdhury has seen the impacts these false recommendations can have on students. “Some people get super fixated on what they eat,” he said. “There’s always people perpetuating false myths. I’ve even heard stories about people trying to gain weight who literally fed themselves to the point of crying.”

Student gym culture also contributes to the use of steroids and supplements. Although steroids aren’t as commonly used among gym-going youth today, natural supplements of dubious safety — such as creatine, a biochemical compound that boosts muscle production, and ashwagandha, a root known to reduce stress — have gained popularity. Fitness content creators’ unrealistic appearances contribute to this trend. “(Social media) definitely adds to insecurity and self-comparison, especially since a lot of the big fitness influencers do not have ‘natural’ physiques because they are using chemicals,” Snyder said.

This dynamic provides false comfort regarding steroid or supplement use for teens, even if their parents or doctors dispel these myths. “I have seen certain people where it is safe to assume they are using steroids,” Snyder said. “It doesn’t affect me, but it does build a weird stigma around physique, because people will become super insecure comparing themselves to bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who are clearly athletically enhanced. It’s weird to know that people are willing to go that far and do that to their bodies, especially if they don’t know the effects or are ignoring them.”

Snyder added that the teenage tendency to seek false consensus contributes to questionable nutrition and supplement choices. “Teens will often look for information that agrees with them rather than information that is actually valid,” she said. “This includes information about side effects, which can be incredibly serious in some cases.”

The social aspect of frequenting the gym can, counterintuitively, harm students, who may begin to compare themselves to others when working out. Interactions with others at the gym may cause an individual to perceive themself as less fit or muscular compared to others, leading to self-esteem issues. This mindset can cause eating disorders and severe body dysmorphia.

Although various triggers exist within the local teen gym culture, they do not have to define a student’s gym-going experience. According to Snyder, focusing solely on one’s own health needs can help create a Palo Alto gym culture that gym-goers can thrive in. “As long as you can ignore all the toxic aspects and not take them into account, (going to the gym) is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself,” she said.

As the name suggests, small businesses are, well, smaller: They have fewer customers, lower revenue and less space. As such, they must go the extra mile to assist and retain their smaller customer base. In a 2011 American Express Survey, 81% of respondents said that small businesses had better customer service than their larger counterparts. Small businesses value their customers more, largely because they have time for them— whereas when shopping at big businesses, complaints or queries can easily be overlooked.

Not only do small businesses care more for their customers, but they also care for their communities. According to another American Express study, small businesses donate around 6% of their revenues to charity, while larger businesses donate only 1%. Forbes found that small businesses are also more likely to purchase products locally, which reduces transportation times and, consequently, pollution.

Additionally, small businesses are significantly better for local and domestic economies. According to the Maine Center for Economic Policy, for every $100 spent at locally-owned businesses, $68 stays in the local economy, compared to only $43 at a national chain. By keeping money within the local market, small businesses are able to provide jobs and stimulate local economic growth. A 2015 Department of Commerce report showed that U.S.-based multinational corporations hired half as many overseas employees as domestic employees—a figure expected to rise. As American big business continues to grow, its domestic workforce is shrinking. At the same time, small businesses continue to employ about 50% of the domestic workforce, according to the same Department of Commerce report. Therefore, by supporting small businesses, one also supports individuals placed both locally and nationally.

While it is at times more efficient and cheaper to shop at large companies, this choice comes with detrimental impacts on the economy. If small businesses fail, large businesses will take over and monopolize various markets. One recent example of monopolization is Ticketmaster: The U.S. Department of Justice reported that Ticketmaster controls over 80% of the concert ticketing industry. With competitors out of the picture, monopolies will inflate prices at the expense of their customers. For example, Ticketmaster is able to charge exorbitant service fees with little incentive to improve their services. Public support
for small businesses stands in the way of this possibility.

This is not to say that one should never shop at a large business. It is, after all, necessary to solicit both small and large businesses to circulate money domestically and internationally. However, it is important to remember the vast advantages that come with frequenting small businesses more often than larger ones.

Most current seniors are able to recall a stricter enforcement of seating culture. Just three years ago, it was an unquestioned school standard for the seniors to sit at the “senior quad,” the turf patch and benches in front of the P-building. Similarly, freshmen would sit at the “freshmen quad,” the concrete amphitheater and large field stretching from the parking lot to the N-building. Nowadays, students sit wherever they like, regardless of grade. “I never felt any pressure to sit in the freshman quad when I got here,” freshman Mikkel Smaaberg- Arnhoff said. “My friends and I just decide to find a spot that we like, and so I guess our grade level didn’t actually matter in the end.” Indeed, the way Smaaberg- Arnhoff described today’s seating culture is more or less the assignment sophomores and juniors had back when a so-called system was followed: find an unclaimed spot on campus, and sit there.

The fact that freshmen and seniors are now choosing to sit wherever they want is certainly a new development. While the majority of freshman quad lunch-goers may still be freshmen, and the majority of senior quad lunch- goers may be seniors, it is visible that the system is far less strict today. In fact, one is virtually guaranteed to find students from any grade sitting in any area on campus.

Today’s Titans, who primarily use Instagram and Snapchat, may be surprised to hear that one of the largest online pages in Gunn history was run on Facebook. In its heyday, the Gunn Confessions group had hundreds of followers and thousands of posts, which were largely anonymous submissions. Students submitted anything from confessions of secret crushes to complaints about classes to requests for personal advice. With the waning popularity of Facebook and the pandemic slowing student activity, it seems the account was taken down a few years ago, as it is now locked on Facebook. However, many similar accounts have attempted to reach the same popularity. Last year, an anonymous website, which was active for several weeks, allowed students to submit potential romantic couples. Earlier this school year, an Instagram confessions account made waves for a week, but was later taken down. While a student forum may never again reach the same popularity as Gunn Confessions, it seems that online pages have and will continue to occasionally pop up and challenge its title.

Unlike grade-based lunch seating and Facebook confessions, one lost Gunn tradition has recently been on a comeback: school announcements. Current seniors recall receiving morning announcements almost every day, which were in video format and produced by the Titan Broadcast Network as part of the video production class in 2019 and early 2020. The announcements continued less consistently through the online 2020-21 school year, but stopped soon afterwards. The class still exists, but interest in producing TBN went down after COVID-19, as new students were not familiar with the program. Since classes returned to campus, some teachers have made a habit of reading online announcements from the daily bulletin. However, video-format updates have recently returned with weekly Titans News Updates, produced by members of the Student Executive Council.

Just like everything in life, traditions come and go. Whether it’s online forums, news updates or even seating culture, every passing year marks the emergence of new traditions and the fading of old ones. Yet for those who miss traditions that have departed, all hope is not lost. Even if some once-beloved traditions no longer exist at Gunn, fragments of them still remain in yearbooks, old articles from The Oracle and in the memories of thousands of alumni. One just has to look hard enough to rediscover them.

Kinyanjui’s first exposure to Valentine’s Day came as a college student in Kenya, back when it was just gaining traction. “The holiday never used to be a thing anywhere else,” he said. “Even when I was attending college, only a handful of people were paying attention to it.”

According to Kinyanjui, the practice of Valentine’s Day in Kenya has become much more popular since his time in college. However, Kinyanjui pointed out that the holiday is still small compared to in the U.S., especially due to socioeconomic limitations. “It is celebrated mainly by people who have some economic means because the holiday renders itself to some kind of spending,” Kinyanjui said. “So that narrows down the people who can participate.”

Kinyanjui also says the financial market for Valentine’s Day is not large enough to warrant the manufacturing of Valentine-specific products, a limiting factor for the popularity of the holiday in Kenya. “You won’t find a whole lot of materials just dedicated for Valentine’s Day,” he said. “Maybe more than not, somebody will buy flowers but it’s not with specific branding.”
Even with differences in scope of the holiday, the celebration of Valentine’s Day in Kenya and other parts of Africa remains nearly identical to what is observed in the U.S. Kinyanjui believes ultimately that there are both positive and negative opportunities