halloween

Jesse and I both had Halloween parties at our schools the past couple weekends. It meant an extra day of going in to work, but they were really fun. At the school I went to, we took the kids out trick-or-treating. The school managers had asked some neighborhood stores to give out candy when we came by. We were a crazy-looking group...about 36 Japanese kids, 30 of which were witches and princesses, some Japanese staff and a few foreigners. I was a rather boring pumpkin, but one of the other teachers was a big eggplant! One little girl shouted "Happy Halloween!" to everyone passing by. We got a lot of smiles. There are a lot of foreigners in this town, and they seemed the most amused. My favorite part of the day: this little 2-year-old, Madoka, held my hand the whole time we were out walking around. She is adorable!

Here's Jesse with some of the kids at his party.

Interesting side-note: We learned that day that eggplants are sometimes used as part of the o-bon rituals in August, when Japanese remember their ancestors. Eggplants represent horses, if I understood correctly, and the idea is that they are sort of a gateway from "the other world." One little girl was really scared of the teacher dressed as an eggplant. I doubt this has anything to do with it, but it seemed sort of appropriate.