Halloween in Tokyo

Hi!

Jacob and his pumpkin snowman

I know some of you have been wondering if they celebrate Halloween here in Japan. And the short and simple answer is, yes! There have been and will be several activities that we did in the US, traditions like visiting a pumpkin patch in the Fall, trick-or-treating on Halloween, and pictures with Santa in early December, to name a few, that I have had to seek out in order to continue them here.

Back home in the Fall, we liked visiting a pumpkin patch to see all the different pumpkins and then buying a few to carve for Halloween. The only pumpkin patch I found here was more like a giant playground full of pumpkins, which was such a fun and different experience for the boys! Because the real estate to grow things like giant pumpkins is hard to find around Tokyo, the pumpkins were flown in (or shipped in?) from the less populated area of Hokkaido, an island in Northern Japan. So even though we couldn't buy the pumpkins from this patch, Jackson and Jacob had such a wonderful time, climbing on, pushing, rolling, and gently kicking the pumpkins around. They even built a pumpkin snowman! And we were able to get some great Fall photographs to add to our collection of yearly pumpkin patch pics and continue to build our tradition. In case you were wondering, we ordered our pumpkin from a local florist to make our Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween!

Jackson and a giant pumpkin

As for the Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating, several businesses on a street near our home had trick-or-treating on Halloween. Since Halloween fell on a Friday, we sent Jackson and Jacob to school in their chosen costumes (a fitting police officer for Jackson, he is a real rule-enforcer these days, and a firefighter for Jacob) and they trick-or-treated with their teachers and classmates on this street in the morning. Then, in the afternoon, we all had a fun Halloween party at school including apple-bobbing, a magic show and lots of delicious food.

Halloween fun at school

My Jackson Boy and me

You can only trick-or-treat in certain neighborhoods here, as it is not the norm for everyone to hand out candy. These neighborhoods are full of other Expats and their willing Japanese neighbors.  I wasn't sure what to expect exactly when we ventured out, so I was surprised to see hundreds or maybe even thousands of costume-cladded children and their parents out trick-or-treating in these neighborhoods. Some of the houses were so decked out to celebrate the holiday (can you see the blow-ups in the background of the picture of Jackson and me?)! This particular house even had American candy, like Butterfingers, Twix, and Almond Joy! I was ecstatic as the Halloween candy here consists mostly of "frosting"-covered rice crackers and other seemingly healthy snacks, haha, when all I wanted were delicious preservatives and SUGAR! When I inquired as to where they got the candy, they told me they got it on their latest trip to Guam! Of course they got it in an American territory! We didn't trick-or-treat for very long since both boys were so exhausted from all of the excitement that day. In fact, Jacob fell asleep in the stroller before we even got to the trick-or-treating neighborhood and Jackson only lasted another hour after his brother. Overall, we all had a blast and again, we were able to carry on our traditions.

Enjoying their Halloween spoils

We are headed to Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and Kobe (all south of Tokyo) on Saturday for a week so in my next post, I will tell you all about our adventures there!

Until next time, I'm sending lots of love!

Thank you so much for reading. I love you.

XOL