We had been talking about Halloween for weeks and weeks. We sorted the LEGO, collected all the black, orange and purple pieces, built Halloween houses and cars. We took out the decorations saved from previous years and put around the house.
– What in particular are you looking forward to with Halloween? I asked.
– To have a costume.
– What kind of costume do you want to have?
– A bat!
So I bought some black cloth, and we went to the 100-yen shop to buy decorations to put on the cloth. It should be pumpkins and spiders, my son decided. We then made a black bat dress together, sticked on the pumpkins and used a kitchen sink net as spider’s web for the plastic spiders. From last year we had bat ears to put on the head, and at kindergarten my son had made a bat mask – now all that was left was to do a little bit of trick and treating with the neighbors. Or rather treating the neighbors.
The whole Halloween-themed shopping season is very big in Japan, with Halloween decorations everywhere, shops selling Halloween sweets and sausages and what have you, but I have not yet come across any kids actually going around knocking on doors and doing pranks. For my part, I have no experience from celebrating Halloween as a child, so we gave our neighbors a heads up instead, prepared a little bag of candy and then went to say hello and give them some Halloween treats. It was short, but for our son sweet, and he seemed happy that he had the chance to wear his costume and go and ring the bell on the neighbors’ doors. Now we will put away our Halloween decorations and start to focus on Christmas instead – I am sure we will have much fun with the Christmas preparations too!
