Happy Halloween

What do you do in a Halloween day? When I was young, there are nothing changes in the city at the Halloween season. However you can see many Halloween decorations around the town in Japan these days and many goods are changed to the Halloween version like a witch, a skull and a skeleton. Some people decorate their house with a Halloween goods.
For the first time I experienced a Halloween party this time at the kindergarten of my daughter this year. There are many foreign teachers at her kindergarten and they teach everything in English to the kindergarten children so that they tell us many English cultures. They held a Halloween party at the kindergarten, kindergartners disguised themselves as some characters like a Pre-cureプリキュア, a Demon slayer鬼滅の刃, a witch, a princes of Disney and more and they say “Trick or Treat” to teachers and they gave some sweets to kindergarten children. Kids looked so fun an fantastic! I took so many pictures of them.

Apart from that, I made the Obento decorated Halloween version and dinner too.

My daughters were so pleased with my cooking and I was happy to see their big smiles!
What did you do in Halloween in your country? Do you eat something special for the Halloween dinner? Do you present something special to kids? I’m interested in a true foreign culture!

It is a kind of festival that you grateful to the abundant harvest that year and the death people’s spirits come back to home, isn’t it? We have the kind of festival like Halloween too in Japan, it’s called “Obonお盆”. People say a ancestor’s spirit comes back to home, but it’s in August in Japan. We visit to a grave and clean it, and we burn the welcome fire to avoid to get lost their way to home at that time. It’s called “Mukaebi 迎え火”. After that we burn “Okuribi 送り火” that to make fire to go them back to. But I guess many young people don’t do that any more, this is just my opinion. My parents and I do not do that.

Anyway speaking of Halloween, we imagine a witch, a black cat, a skull, a skeleton…they are a symbol of something scare, aren’t they? In Japan we imagine a lot of ghosts called Youkai妖怪 speaking of something scare like Rokurokkubiろくろ首, Hitotsume-kozo一つ目小僧, Demon鬼, and a Japanese ghost doesn’t have leg because we don’t wear shoes in the house people say that. There are so many differences between foreign countries and Japan in just a small topics like ghost. It’s really interesting.

I will share about the Japanese ghosts someday. Are you interested in them?

See you next time!