Halloween

Today in Japan, we celebrated Halloween. Basically, a bunch of parents bring in their kids to a gym, and there are all kinds of activities. This one, however, was in English with things translated into Japanese, rather than being a normal, purely Japanese-language event. We had two groups, each of which were split up accordingly into groups of 8 (8 is an important number in cultures in Asia, especially those that have history interacting with the Chinese). So I had 8 kids, ages of about 4-11, and so did the other 7 teacher/assistants. Everything was broken into 8's, fairly cleanly.

I was dressed as a Samurai, which was fun. I got the costume from Kyoko-sensei, who was basically in charge, as she usually is of almost anything, due to her high status in the community.

In my first group I had the CUTEST little 5 year old Japanese girl in my group. As grandma would say "Just like a doll!" She may have even been 4, but it is a tough call. She kept trying to take my wooden sword. When I tried asking for it back and then giving it a tug, I realized she wanted to play while we did our activites. So I simply picked up my sword as we were about to move the group on to the next activity. She stayed attached until we touched down. I'm glad she was light, haha. What really surprised me was that she was really shy, she just seemed to want the sword. And she wasn't saying anything the entire time until we got to an activity where they had to trick-or-treat with us. The catch was, they'd trick-or-treat as a relay team, trying to ask for these items (named after scary halloween creatures), and then the winning team would get stuff in the end. She was put at the front, and looked pretty uncomfortable. I couldn't move, because I was the one to be questioned. She made her way quietly across the floor, and I heard this 5ish year old voice, in clearer English than most adults every achieve in Japan even after 8 years of study, she said to me "Can I have a Mummy?" I was so shocked it took me a moment to react and distribute said Mummy to her. Who would have known this quiet girl with a thing for swords had almost nativelike pronuciation??

A few pictures:

Maybelle, my Phillipina friend.Maybe the only Catholic other than myself in Miki or even Hyogo.

Trang and Maybelle acting natural, looking at some pictures they took of each other's costumes.

You really can't see it very well in this picture, but that mask on Trang is actually made of the shell of a 2-ring binder, glitter, tape, a ribbon, and glue using only scissors. I made it for her since she expressed a lack of talent in costuming. It turned out really great. The eyes are really smooth and rounded off, in the constantly curving leaf-style. I had no measuring instruments either, and I had to punch the beginning of the eye holes using stubborn old scissors. I'm amazed it turned out so good! These freak moments of artistic and technical talent happen with me about once every 8 years or so though. Check in with me when I'm about 32 for the next one.