Halloween Report

Parties and parades are this weekend. Candy displays are small or non-existent in stores here. Anything Halloween is already sold out in our neighborhood grocery store.

Check out HTJ Halloween posts by clicking on the labels below.

Serious Sweepers Or Halloween Broom Parking?

Japanese Halloween Treat

This is the first time I found Halloween-shaped glutinous rice cakes filled with bean paste at our neighborhood grocery store. Yum!

A purple ghost and a jack-o-lantern.

Halloween Pumpkin Ramen

I bought this at a convenience store on sale a day after Halloween. It's a snack; dried pieces of pumpkin flavored ramen. See the tape on the little witch's cheek? That's a boo-boo (a sore caused by an accident.) I've seen that on other Halloween decorations here. Maybe it's becoming a Japanese Halloween motif.

Happy Halloween!

No party yet this year. Little Brother came home Friday with a fever. H1N1 is making its rounds here. It is called Type A. Fortunately, he doesn't have that flu. Just a cold. So no happy Halloween for us.

Something exciting did happen today, though. I rescued another kitten! I heard it meowing in a shed near the field behind our house. Click on the label below. We will take care of it until we find a home for it. She's spending a couple of days at the vet.

Click on the label below to see what we've done in the past for Halloween. I wanted to post a photo of something orange so here's a persimmon tree. The kitten is orange, but I didn't get a picture of her.

Halloween Party Treats 2008

Pumpkin flavored marshmallows! Made in Japan.

This cookie-covered chocolate is available year round, but it had Halloween decorations on the box this month.

This big bag of candy was bought in the States. Little Brother was going to give it to his friends for souvenirs, but couldn't give it away at school. He made treat bags to give away.

You've probably seen these before. Instead of gummi bears, there were Halloween shaped gummis.

Pumpkin Hunt

We usually order a pumpkin from FBC (Foreign Buyer's Club) for our Halloween party. The pumpkins are grown by Japanese farmers and then FBC delivers them. This year I forgot! A few flower shops and food departments in department stores have one or two pumpkins for sale in October. This year I had to go on a pumpkin hunt. I found one at a flower shop several stops from our station. I had to carry it home in my shopping bag. I sat on the train with this big round bag on my lap. It was really heavy! I almost had to roll it home! I had to carry it with both hands because I was afraid the straps would break. We wouldn't want to eat pumpkin pie for Halloween! People noticed me. They looked and smiled when they saw the orange pumpkin sticking out the top of my bag. My neighbor said, "Oh, it's Halloween." Japan has changed a lot.

It's the biggest pumpkin we've ever had in Japan. I put a deck of American playing cards next to it so you could tell how big it is. The flower shop clerk decorated it with black tape. The "X" near the top means that this pumpkin was hit over the head. An "X" is used in cartoons, too.

I bought these cookies for Little Brother and Big Sister's snack. The party is tomorrow. The cookies are from Viet Nam.

Persimmon Jack O'Lanterns

There was a time when we couldn't buy orange pumpkins here. So, we used persimmons to make jack-o-lanterns. Persimmons are smaller and softer and easier to carve. Here's how we do it.

I (the mom) cut off the top. Even when the persimmon is ripe, the fruit is a little difficult to spoon out. I cut around the outer edge and then through the center twice. Big Sister and Little Brother scoop out and eat the fruit. Then they cut a face in the sides. When they were younger, they used toothpicks instead of knives or pumpkin carving kits.

We stick a meditation or prayer candle in the center. It's possible for the candle to stand on its own if it is pushed down into the bottom of the fruit.

Here are some meditation candles. These are really short. They burn for 5 minutes. I put some coins around them so you can tell how small they are. There is a coin from Korea, Japan, France, Mexico, Canada, Malaysia, the U.S., and the Philippines. Click on the picture to enlarge it. I couldn't find any other foreign coins. I know I have more somewhere.

You probably can't find meditation or prayer candles in your neighborhood. You could use birthday candles, but have an adult cut them into small pieces. Would that work? In any case, this is something to do with an adult. Never light candles without an adult with you.

Octopus Trap

This was outside under the deck for years. I thought it was a vase when Jiji first showed it to me. He said rope was tied around it and put in the water. Octopus would go in because they like dark places. It would be pulled up out of the water hopefully with the octopus still inside.

I put dried bay branches in it. We decorated them with spider webs and plastic pumpkins. We used it for a Halloween decoration. We also had a plastic inflatable octopus that was a hoop game. We played it at the party. Guests asked, "Why tako, octopus?" They thought it was funny that we think an octopus is scary.

Happy Halloween!

Look at the broom! It is nothing out of the ordinary here in Japan. Workers use them on the streets here. This one is huge. It is as tall as I am. I am 5'6". The bristles are as high as my waist. Actually, this one is extraordinarily large. It must be industrial size!

We had a party in our garden last weekend. Twelve children came. They bobbed for apples. They dressed up in costumes from our costume chest, and they hit a pinata. They also ate a lot.

I had bought this pumpkin a few days before. At the party, I cut open the top of the pumpkin. I asked, "Who wants to pull the top off?" Everyone wanted to! They did junken, or rock, scissors, paper to decide who would get to do it. Then they each wanted to scoop out the seeds from inside. They lined up and took turns. They washed their hands at the garden sink afterwards. They each carved one or two parts of a jack o' lantern's face. This pumpkin ended up with four faces!

They went to a nearby park to play dodgebee (with a soft frisbee). It was getting dark (around 5:00) so I went down to give them glowing bracelets. I had bought them for the kids to wear home. Everyone had fun. Three kids had never been to a Halloween party.

Street Workers' Carts

No one was in sight. This cart was on the side of the street. There were tools on the cart. There were also traffic cones. There was a twig broom, too. It looks like a witch's broom, doesn't it? We'll use one for a Halloween decoration.

Pet Dishes and Another Japanese Halloween Store Display

These are pet dishes.



This is a Halloween display at another hardware store. There are more Halloween displays in my area this year. They are getting bigger, too. There are more Halloween items for sale now.

Toys "R" Us Fuchu, Japan

I thought you might like to see the sign and the entrance to this store. It is a familiar sight in North America. There aren't very many of them here in Japan. They are few and far between.



This one is in the basement of a shopping complex. You can go by elevator or escalator. Here is the view from the escalator. They have a lot of American toys (made in China) but most are Japanese.



Here is their Halloween display. It is rather small compared to the ones in the States, but it is much bigger than it was last year. Halloween is growing in popularity here.

Games You Can Play

Look who was waddling stiff-legged around the game center.


For 200 yen, you could try once to get one just like him. For 500 yen, you get 3 tries.



For another 100 yen, you can try to get a plastic mascot to hang from your school bag.


And then there's Pooh dressed up for Halloween. This is only a sampling of the games you can play at a game center.


Today was the official Sports Day, a day when schools all over Japan hold sports events. The schools in our area, however, alternate between May and October. This school year, they had their sports day in May. Check the archives of May2006 for the postings about Sports Day.

It would have been a beautiful day for Sports Day. It was pretty quiet in the neighborhood today. It was a three day weekend, so the neighborhood seemed empty.

It's Beginning To Look More Like Halloween

Here is a sweet pumpkin! I have mentioned before in an earlier post that people here give you the "Peace" sign when their picture is taken.




Big sister and I went shopping today. We had fun looking at Halloween decorations. Halloween displays have been in some stores since the end of September. The displays are small, but they're everywhere. In the last five years, Halloween has become more popular in Tokyo. I'm not sure about other parts of Japan.

Little by little over the years, more decorations have become available. Orange pumpkins of varying sizes can now be found. Big sister, Little Brother, and I used to use kaki, persimmons, to make little jack-o-lanterns. They were easy to cut. We took them down to the entrance and lit them for a while. Baba and Jiji came to look and enjoy them with us.

Today at this store, two salespeople were dressed in costumes. They were giving candy to children. They were happy to have their pictures taken.

P.S. This year, there were very few displays for jugoya, the day to honor the full moon. I was surprised.