What's with this whole love confession thing I keep seeing in anime? Is this something people actually do in Japan?

There's tons of anime where the way two people begin a romantic encounter is that one person confronts the other and "confesses". As in, they just flat out tell the other person in private that they have feelings for them. It's always in a rather blunt way, and it seems to be up to the person on the receiving end to either accept or reject the confessor.

Is this an actual thing in Japan? I know that in western culture it's definitely not the norm, but but all I know it could just be one of those anime quirks.