Halloween Decorations

I love to decorate the house for the holidays, especially Halloween and Christmas.  I think it is so fun for the kids and it adds a little variety that I need.  Last year we were living in a hotel so we didn't get to decorate at all.  That just made me want to decorate twice as much this year.  It was still difficult because we didn't bring any Halloween decorations from home and we are limited in what we can find at the stores here in Japan.

We bought mostly everything at the dollar store except for the skeleton and some orange lights we hung outside.  Those we got on Amazon.  It is a little strange decorating the outside for Halloween when it is not something that the Japanese people do.  They probably think we are really weird for putting up orange lights and pumpkins outside our door.  Halloween is really starting to catch on here though, and I've heard form others that even in the past ten years it has grown from an American holiday no one really thought about, to now selling some decorations and candy in the stores.  I'd imagine it is more popular in our town because on Halloween night tons of Japanese people come onto base and go trick-or-treating.

I love how this web turned out.  Bob put it up with just black yarn.  It turned a big blank white wall into a fun simple and practically free decoration.

The bats were another almost free decoration that turned out amazing.  It was really a family project.  We all worked for about 30 minutes.  I nonstop traced bats onto construction paper, while everyone else cut them out.

And our little witches broom and hat.  It is actually a real broom, but I thought it looked cute set up in the corner.  These types of brooms are popular and pretty normal here.  I remember the first time Leon saw someone sweeping their driveway with one.  He insisted she was a witch.

 Can't wait for the big day.

Halloween

Our first Halloween in Japan was amazing!  It isn't traditionally a Japanese Holiday so I wasn't sure what to expect.  The Japanese have adopted many of the Halloween decorations and the stores even sell some halloween things but they don't really do trick-or-treating.

There are enough Americans around us that we were able to go anyway.  Our future neighborhood set up a little trick-or-treating event the weekend before.  All the participating houses put up a sign on their door.  It was mostly the Americans but some of the Japanese people participated as well.  Then on Halloween we went trick or treating all around base.  There were lots of kids!  Everyone was so close together the kids got plenty of candy in just half an hour.  

Anyway, we had a ninja.

Mulan.

Another Mulan.

Another Ninja.

And Sushi, the chef and the soy sauce to go with.  

After trick-or-treating we came back to the lodge and watched "The Nightmare Before Christmas."  Everyone loved it.  Of course we sipped apple cider and ate candy while watching.  Tucker threw up that night and claims he didn't eat that much candy even though he felt perfectly fine again in the morning.

Pumpkin Carving

This year we let everyone get their own pumpkin.  I was hesitant because Bob and I usually end up doing most of the work.  This year Bob was super fast and did about 90% of the work.  I helped the kids pick a picture and draw it on the pumpkin and Bob carved them all.  Except Tuckers, he did his himself.

 On the left we have Scarletts, Penelopes, and Tucker's.

Here are Bob's and Leon's.  I think they turned out cute and the kids all seemed pretty happy with them.

Trunk-Or-Treat

The church trunk-or-treat was fun!  They first had a dinner and activities. I loved that!  We are used to just coming in the dark passing out/getting candy and leaving.  I usually leave feeling disappointed because I didn't get to talk or really see anyone.  The inside dinner and games gave us a chance to see costumes and mingle without the craziness of trying to hurtle the kids from trunk to trunk.  And the best part was that it wasn't on Halloween!  It was great to not have to rush home and still try to take the kids around the neighborhood afterward.

I didn't get any pictures of it but they had this cool spooky room for the kids to walk though.  It was pitch black except for a strobe light.  They then had cardboard boxes for the kids to crawl through  and different curtains to walk around.  They must have used dividers to create a path through.  Then a couple scary people dressed up in the corners.  It was a mini haunted house and I thought it was very cute.  Some of my kids thought it was pretty scary.

After the dinner and most activities they invited the kids to walk around in a parade while parents went outside to set up trunks.  I stayed in with the kids and walked around the building.  We didn't realize it but during the parade a couple adults were looking at costumes figureing out prizes.

Tucker won for scariest costume.  He was thrilled.  Scarlett came crying to me because she wanted candy.  Penelope was confused as to why she didn't win the "Most Boo-tiful" prize.  Leon didn't seem to have an issue with not winning.

Below is our trunk, sorry I didn't get a picture until after we took down some of the decorations.  Not bad for a last minute trip to the dollar store.

Afterwards we were surprised because our battery was dead!  Bob was playing creepy music but only for about 30 minutes.  I still think that was weird.  Luckily we have cables and the person parked next to us was very willing to help us jump it.  It was the quickest car jump I've ever witnessed.

The kids were happy with their candy.

Tirck-Or-Treat

Trick-Or-Treating was amazing this year!  The kids were all excited and I love going out in 70 degree weather!  It is so much easier when we don't have to worry about planning warm and waterproof costumes.

We didn't have an exact theme like we do some years.  We just tried to go for classic spooky costumes, and then I let the kids pick.

This year we had a zombie ghost.

A not scary witch.

A mummy.

A skeleton.

Another mummy.

 And one more skeleton.

Because there are no kids on our street and half the units are empty we went to the closest neighborhood.  It was great! The houses were closer together than we were used to and everyone was passing out really good candy.  By that I mean handfuls of chocolate bars.

Scarlett was the most gung ho.  She ran to every house and was usually first getting there.  Leon was right behind her until his bucket got heavy and he started to get tired.  After that we needed to help him carry his bucket, and when we didn't he had to lean to the other side to balance out the weight.  It was cute..   Tucker seemed to want to hang back with Bob and I.  He got scared the quickest.  Penelope was somewhere in the middle.

We had to talk to the kids about not putting their faces in the window.  We also had an issue with them saying "truck or treat."  I think it was a mix of trick-or-treat and trunk-or-treat.

The funniest time was when an old lady opened the door and said "Arn't you a couple days early?"  Tucker turned back and no one else was sure what to do.  She eventually brought out the candy.  The kids weren't sure if she was joking or not but I think she was serious.

Toward the end Tucker even asked if they should dump out their buckets in the car because people kept saying that they had a lot of candy and stopped giving them handfuls.  Instead we just walked back to the car.  They sure did get a lot of candy!

Now I'm stuck with figuring out what to do with all this candy.  I'm of course going to eat lots of it when they are sleeping.  But I'm torn between letting them eat as much as they want getting it over with, and the longer more tedious method of limiting their candy consumption.

Tiny Shoppers

On halloween we needed to make a quick stop at target before we went trick-or-treating.

They had four of these cute little carts so each kid grabbed on.  I remember using them when I was a kid but haven't seen them around in the stores we usually go to for my  kids to enjoy.

They were so cute and the kids were having a blast!  They thought it was so fun to have their own carts.  But it was probably the craziest shopping trip ever.  They were already hyped up and drawing a lot of attention because of the costumes.  Leon and Scarlett hit me and bob in the ankles several times and Leon managed to tip his cart over two times (yes, he had groceries in it).

It was fun, and if we had only one child would have been much more manageable.  Maybe it isn't such a bad thing that our stores don't have them out for kids to use.