Halloween

There was an interesting article in the Daily Yomiuri (Japan based English newspaper) about how Halloween is becoming more and more of a global holiday. I don’t have the link, but the thrust of the article was that Asian countries, which don’t traditionally celebrate Halloween, are getting more and more interested in the holiday.

With the exception of Easter, most Western holidays have been imported to Japan in some form or another. Mostly in very superficial ways. For example in shopping malls and parks in Japan there are just as many Christmas decorations as back home (more sometimes), and yet Christmas itself is still a working day.

Without making any superficial comparisons between class A and class B, Halloween is much the same way. Lots of decorations up around Halloween time, but no one observes trick-or-treating or other Halloween traditions.

I’m not sure if it’s my imagination, or the fact that I’m now in a different area of Japan, but it does seem to me that recently there is a lot more interest in Halloween than there was in my first year, which would correlate with the Yomiuri article. I see a lot more decorations in stores now, and I’m being asked to coordinate Halloween into my October lessons more and more.

For instance last week we did a series of lessons on Halloween for the elementary school. We also did some demonstration lessons in front of a large group of other teachers.

(Because of the pilot program this year, we do a lot of demonstration lessons. I don’t like doing them because in the elementary school it’s necessary to jump around a lot and make a fool of myself to get the kids attention. This is hard for me to do when there are adults watching.)

Anyway, I was asked to wear a Halloween costume. I guess it was just assumed that because I was an American I had all sorts of Halloween costumes laying around in my closet.

I used to have a mask of President Bush which I used for Halloween, but I’m pretty sure I gave that away to someone when I left Oita. Just as well because it was the kind of mask that covered my whole face and muffled my voice, and I couldn’t really have taught a lesson in that thing anyway.

In junior high I used to dress up as the invisible man. I used to wear dark sunglasses, wrap my face in bandages, put on a hat, long coat, gloves, etc. Just like the invisible man from those old black and white movies.

I could have reconstructed that I suppose, but again it would have been hard to do a lesson dressed like that. So I decided that simple is best.

I already have a straw hat that could perhaps pass as a cowboy hat. I figured all I needed was a mask, and I was the lone ranger.

(My kids didn’t know who the Lone Ranger was of course, but the Principle and Vice-Principle and some of the older teachers got real nostalgic when I mentioned it. I guess back in the old days the Lone Ranger must have been very popular in Japan.)

With all the Halloween decorations in the stores these days (see above), I was fairly confident I would be able to find a simple eye mask with ease, but after an evening scouring all the stores with Halloween decorations, I couldn’t find anything useful.

So I ended up making my own. I cut a bandanna up into strips, put eyeholes in one of the strips, and tied it on.

It seemed like such a simple idea in theory, but you would be surprised how much trouble a little mask can cause sometimes. The thing would not stay steady on my face. It would move slightly up or down depending on my expression, and I constantly had to be adjusting it to avoid having the bandanna rub against my eyes. Rather embarrassing in a demonstration lesson to be always adjusting my costume when I was trying to teach.

After the first lesson I thought I just needed to make the eye wholes bigger. It turned into big raccoon type eye wholes, but that still didn’t stop the bandanna from sliding around on my face.
I still have a few more Halloween lessons to do before the month of October is over, so I might have to rethink this costume.

Link of the Day
More Links from Japan times: This article makes fun of Bush's idea that he gets his directions straight from God.

And here is an article that describes the origins of some of Japans more bizarre customs.