Yesterday I walked by a kimono shop which had an elegant display with kimono-clad witches and a few minutes later I entered a grocery store proudly displaying Japanese Halloween candy (flan-flavored Kit-Kats, chocolate jack-o-lanterns, etc). The hundred yen stores have been crammed with costumes, decor, and kitschy Halloween trinkets for the past few months. The coffee shops have pumpkin spice lattes.
It feels surreal and it is by far one of the biggest changes I have seen since living in Japan for the first time twenty years ago. At that point, Halloween was a very exciting foreign concept for my high school students. Since there weren't any North American pumpkins, I brought in bags of oranges and they gleefully drew Jack-o-Lantern faces onto the tiny orbs. And when we lived in Okinawa fourteen years ago, there was the memorable year of the pumpkin lottery when the shipment of pumpkins that were being sent to the commissary arrived too rotten to sell. The remaining healthy pumpkins were raffled off: twenty five pumpkins for the fifty thousand Americans living on an Japanese island. That was the year I purchased three plastic jack-o-lanterns who have happily traveled the world with us.
And now we are back in Japan and a bit overwhelmed to see Halloween celebrated in stores, bakeries, and even in a local sushi-go-round that is selling ghoulish bites. I have mixed feelings about it. It's fun to see the festive Japanese twist on this very American holiday, but it also makes me sad to see how much of it has seeped into daily life here. That hasn't stopped me from stocking up on gobs of candy because one thing that always happens when we live overseas is that our host-nation neighbors are invited to trick-or-treat on the base and that always results in a very busy night of celebrating. It's strange to be living this mixed-up expat life, but I guess that cauldrons filled with bizarre concoctions is all part of the Halloween experience, too.
Post a Comment