Whats the haps for Halloween?

[Hawaiibadboy]

Throwing a HUGE party with over 100 guests.
You can see the preperations at http://www.waikiki2yanai.blogspot.com

[dimwit]

Halloween was pretty nuts around here. We had about 70 kids out trick or treating and we were having to ration candy at the end. I'm still in the process of recovering from it.

[sublight]

We didn't have any trick-or-treat'ers, but we did hang a basket of candy by our front door with some decorations and an invitation to take some. Enough kids go by our apartment that most of the candy was gone by the end of the day. We also got a bunch of thank-you's from the other parents, so maybe next year we'll get some apartment-wide ToT'ing going.

[GomiGirl]

Isn't trick or treating just sending the kids out to beg for food?

[ttjereth]

Isn't trick or treating just sending the kids out to beg for food?

No.

Since they are demanding candy in exchange for not doing something undesirable/annoying (trick or treat), it's actually more like sending them out on their yearly rounds of a protection racket

[Hawaiibadboy]

Halloween was pretty nuts around here. We had about 70 kids out trick or treating and we were having to ration candy at the end. I'm still in the process of recovering from it.

You in Japan?
I would like to try and get my neighbors into it from next year if I can. The Haunted house was a HUGE success so will be doing that and expanding it every year.

[Hawaiibadboy]

Some pics of my prep at my blog

http://www.waikiki2yanai.blogspot.com

[bidayuhboy]

Back in the day drunken costumed gaijin revelers would ride the Yamanote line in a complete circle usually beginning in Shinjuku or Shibuya to the bewilderment of locals (or so I heard) it was always an interesting way to spend halloween..

[hundefar]

Back in the day

It is still going on. There was one last year.

[YT]rWORKaOBrwI[/YT]

[IkemenTommy]

Anyone know when the Yamanote Line party is happening this year? Will it be on the 31st?

[wuchan]

Isn't trick or treating just sending the kids out to beg for food?

My dad used to tell me stories about when he was a kid. My gramps would go with him, in regular clothes, and get shots at most of the houses they visited. What ever happened to that?

[Behan]

The Yamanote Line party must scare the sh*t out of the natives.

[Samurai_Jerk]

[YT]rWORKaOBrwI[/YT]

That looks fucking awful.

[GuyJean]

The Yamanote Line party must scare the sh*t out of the natives.

Some it does, others it livens up their routinely seppoku commute home. I've seen old couples, salarymen, and possible train jumpers forget about their worries and succumb to the festivities.. Beers are routinely passed to those who brave to enter. At least, that's how it was when I was a young 'wipa-sunapa-'.

GJ

[Iraira]

The Yamanote Line party must scare the sh*t out of the natives.

At a party last night, told some J-friends about the gaijin Yamanote party, they're up for it. They live by the concept that one must find a few moments every day to have some sort of party-like activity in order to remain sane. This is supposed to increase by a magnitude of 50 on the weekend which technically begins on Thursday, because Friday is the start of the weekend, so your real partying can commence on Thursday. Essentially, "Thursday is close enough to Friday"
Things got real reductionist afterwards, as knowledge that tomorrow is Thursday, and hence, it is the start of the weekend means that you can start cutting loose on Wednesday....repeat to slide this back to Tuesday. Monday is Monday no matter what and no matter where....so we stopped there. Anyone have any complaints with 6-day weekends?

[pheyton]

It is still going on. There was one last year.

[YT]rWORKaOBrwI[/YT]

Ah the good ole' days. Reminds me of my company drink parties. We would take over a train car. That's where my avatar came from.

I did come up with a great costume this year! Please, let me know if you'd care to join the "Groping Squad". We can all dress up as Japanese salary men, hair, glasses and all and have a legitimate excuse to cop a feel. ]<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5X2rt70kckA&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5X2rt70kckA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/YT]

[IkemenTommy]

[Greji]

[quote="pheyton"] We can all dress up as Japanese salary men, hair, glasses and all and have a legitimate excuse to cop a feel. ]

Ahh, Why do we have to wait for Halloween?

[Behan]

....This is supposed to increase by a magnitude of 50 on the weekend which technically begins on Thursday, because Friday is the start of the weekend, so your real partying can commence on Thursday. Essentially, "Thursday is close enough to Friday"
Things got real reductionist afterwards, as knowledge that tomorrow is Thursday, and hence, it is the start of the weekend means that you can start cutting loose on Wednesday....repeat to slide this back to Tuesday. Monday is Monday no matter what and no matter where....so we stopped there. Anyone have any complaints with 6-day weekends?

My head is spinning from reading this.

[Iraira]

My head is spinning from reading this.

Re-read it when you have a hangover on Monday morning. It'll make more sense then...did I mention that I graduated from the Donald Rumsfeld Linguistics College?

[2triky]

Godzilla's Older, Creepier Cousins
Beings Such as Filth Licker Haunt Japanese Culture

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 31, 2008



TOKYO -- Halloween is a frothy foreign import in Japan, an excuse to have a party and eat sweets.

Monsters, though, are a more serious matter. They are indigenous and reputed to be everywhere. One is called Akaname, the Filth Licker, and he haunts dirty bathrooms. Using his long, lascivious tongue, he eats bathtub scum.

As if that were not scary enough, there is also the matter of shame. In this exceedingly well-scrubbed country, if word got out that there's a Filth Licker in your bathroom, your reputation would be ruined.

The Halloween season, then, is an opportunity to shine a festive light on the Filth Licker and his creepy kin. There are thousands of them, and collectively they are known as yokai, a word that is formed from the Japanese characters for "otherworldly" and "weird."

Yokai were tormenting and delighting the Japanese hundreds of years before Halloween chocolates and pumpkin-colored cupcakes showed up in this country's supermarkets.

Yokai emerged from Japan's polytheistic culture as personifications of superstitions and fears. The most widely known yokai is the oni, or demon, which is extremely powerful but not always dangerous.

As Japan has modernized, there has been a tendency to transform even the scariest of the yokai into cuddly creatures suitable for children. An extreme example of this cute-ification is onibaba, or demon hag. She is the horribly unbalanced elderly woman who collects livers of unborn children. In recent years, she has been reborn as the friendly mascot of a theme park built near onibaba's traditional haunts.

Professional chroniclers of yokai say the spooky creatures are remarkably similar -- in their folkloric origins and unspeakable powers -- to the ghosts, zombies, skeletons and assorted night stalkers who have wandered for centuries through the Western imagination.

"Anything that is unexplainable, anything that is scary, anything that is really weird can be considered the doings of a yokai," said Kenji Murakami, author of a yokai encyclopedia and 19 other yokai-related books. "We do not have a tradition of Halloween, but I think yokai are perfectly appropriate for Halloween. They help explain the inexplicable, and they are fun."

Part myth, part tall tale, part pop culture, yokai haunt mountains, swamps, subway stations and toilets across Japan. One yokai likes to plunge a large, hairy disembodied foot through the roofs of rich people's houses. Another is made entirely of discarded dinnerware and is more dangerous to himself than to others.

While Western ghosts and ghouls tend to surface during the Halloween season, yokai are almost always hanging around.

One is featured on the label of Kirin beer. Another -- a raccoon dog with super-size testicles -- is depicted in statues that stand outside thousands of restaurants and bars. Yokai-like imagery is found in the best-selling novels of Haruki Murakami and the internationally honored animated films of Hayao Miyazaki.

This fall, yokai are featured in a new book, "Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide," by the husband-and-wife team of Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt.

Yoda, 37, grew up in Tokyo, where she says she spent a good part of her elementary school years devising strategies to avoid being mutilated by one of Japan's best-known yokai, Kuchisake Onna, the Slash-Mouth Woman.

This yokai is a shapely and well-dressed but violently insecure young woman who wears a mask over her monstrously disfigured mouth, which reaches from ear to ear and is bursting with teeth.

"First of all, she asks you if she is pretty," Yoda said. "If you say, 'Yes, you're pretty,' she's going to cut your mouth just like hers. But if you say she is not pretty, she is going to cut your mouth anyway."

While Yoda was debating this horrible conundrum in Tokyo schoolyards, Alt was growing up in Potomac, where he was desperate to read Japanese comic books.

"This was during the era of Japan-bashing, when everyone was afraid that Japanese corporations were going to take over the United States," said Alt, 35. "At Walt Whitman High School, the other kids took Japanese-language classes because they wanted an edge in business. I just wanted to read about Godzilla in his native language."

Godzilla is the most famous kaiju, or "strange beast," and is considered to be a younger cousin of yokai.

Alt and Yoda met when she was in graduate school at the University of Maryland and he was working at the U.S. Patent Office, translating Japanese patent applications. He moonlighted translating Japanese video games.

At a party, he asked her to help him with the videos, and their collaboration soon turned into a marriage. In short order, they moved to Tokyo and formed a successful two-person company that specializes in the translation of comic books and video games. Their work includes the English-language version of "Dead or Alive Xtreme 2."

They turned to yokai, they said, because they wanted to do original work and because they love them.

Since she was a child, Yoda has been reading yokai tales of terror and studying yokai art. Alt traces the roots of Japanese pop culture, including anime, manga and films, back to yokai cards that Japanese children played with in the 1800s.

Their book is a breezy summary of what the average Japanese adult probably already knows about yokai.

Such as kappa: a short, green, flatulent monster with a tortoise shell on his back and a cup of water on his head, from which he draws his terrible powers. He likes to eat human entrails. Kappa are said to live in rivers, lakes, swamps and wetlands.

To keep their offspring from playing in these dangerous places, parents over the years have told chilling tales of what an angry kappa can do.

But kappa, like many yokai, have a weakness that is characteristically Japanese.

"They are very polite creatures," Alt said. "If you encounter a kappa, the best way to survive is to bow. He will bow back, and the water will spill out of his head dish, thus rendering him completely harmless."

And what about Slash-Mouth Woman, the one who cuts your face if you are nice and cuts your face if you are not?

"She likes candy," Yoda said. "The best way to escape is to always carry candy, and when she comes near, throw it as far as you can and run like crazy."

[ichigo partygirl]

god i miss Halloween in Japan - i been to some pretty awesome dance party/raves over the years there....I think its the combo of the Japanese who love to dress-up and the American's who really get into it. Its not such a big thing here.
I was out last night drinking with my boys, enjoying the constant stream of costume-wearing-drunk-students walking past. My personal fav was a guy dressed up as Noddy - and a half darth vadar half pirate combo

[Taro Toporific]

It looks like the Yamanote-sen-jack was a bust this year with all the keystone cops...

[color="Silver"]rest-of-story
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[Mulboyne]

I have mixed feelings about the "Halloween train". Japan Probe has run a few pieces (e.g. here and here) where the general tone is very critical of the partygoers. As far as I know, the informal event has taken place, without major incident, for at least a couple of decades so I'm curious whether it really did start to get out of hand last year or whether it's another example of a storm of outrage fuelled by the internet. There's certainly never been anything like this year's media coverage and police presence.

Given all the attention, there isn't any point in people demanding the "right to party". There's no "tradition" to maintain and it seems a bit bloody-minded to want to try to carry on as before when there is such a lot of opposition. It's a shame, however, that something essentially harmless has come to be viewed in the same light as a violent demonstration. Perhaps the internet also made it easier to spread information about the event which turned it into an unmanageable monster in which case it's probably better for everyone if those party urges are turned in another direction.

[Takechanpoo]

[Iraira]

[IkemenTommy]

[YT]v-jNaKHVnTw[/YT]

[pheyton]

[YT]v-jNaKHVnTw[/YT]

Was that Takepoo on the train? The 2chan? "I want to kill you"!

[Behan]

They need metal detectors to make sure the 2-chan people aren't packing knives. I wouldn't be surprised if 2-chan people waited for the groups to head home and try to get them in smaller groups or alone.

[Samurai_Jerk]

The guy that was supposed threatened by a 2chner also said he doesn't really speak Japanese, so who knows what was actually said. To me it looks like a bunch of gaijin pricks and wannabe Japanese causing trouble for everyone. Fucking douchebags.