Fall Fun

Theo loves dressing up and as Halloween draws near, every day is a chance to try out a new look. That is why we get to spend our afternoons with clown boy

and eating supper with Batman.

Last year I was happy to discover that the fruit farm where we went apple picking grew large carving pumpkins. This year they allowed us to take one home as well. Theo was overjoyed and spent a deal of time talking to the pumpkin and protecting it from William.

Last year, I carved the pumpkin about a week and a half before Halloween. In Canada, this was perfectly fine since the outdoor temperature is cool enough by mid-October that it still looks fresh by the time the end of the month rolls around. Not so in Japan. Ours was kind of warped, moldy, and shrunken from sitting out in the sun and warmth. This year I made sure to wait until just before Halloween to crack the pumpkin open.

Theo insisted that the pumpkin told him what face he wanted carved on himself (yes, I know how creepy that is) and proceeded to draw me a couple of diagrams of how I should carve it. I let the boys help me scoop out the innards but I did all the carving. This is only partially because I don't want them to cut themselves and almost entirely because I love carving pumpkins and don't want to give up my one chance a year to my children. It is pretty selfish, but when they are older maybe, maybe I will relinquish my supreme carving rights. I thought I was being pretty generous this year to allow Theo to completely decide what the carving should be.

Here is the finished jack-o-lantern:

Theo seems to be pretty pleased with the result.

Theo has officially named it the King of Darkness, which I think is a pretty apt name for a jack-o-lantern.

All ready for Halloween! 

Halloween 2012

November has come and gone and I still have not posted our Halloween photos. I swear I have a valid reason for slacking off in my postings, but that will have to wait for another day. So without further ado, here is how we celebrated Halloween this year:

Arguably, Halloween is purely a marketing ploy no matter what country you live in, but in Japan it seems to be all consumerism and no activities to attempt to balance it out. Candy and snack companies wholeheartedly endorse Halloween in Japan.  All sorts of orange and black, spooky themed decorations and food wrappers can be found during the month of October, but actual festivities, like carving jack-o-lanterns, children dressing up, or trick or treating, have yet to be adopted. There is a month of chintzy consumer items available but the 31st goes by quiet and unremarked year after year. Except by us.

In mid-October while picking apples at a local farm, I spied some huge carving pumpkins. They were scattered around the orchard marking the rows. When it came time to pay for our apples, I enquired about how much it would cost to buy a pumpkin too. They were pretty amused that I would want one of the massive pumpkins and let me pick one out for free. Dustin and I  absolutely love carving jack-o-lanterns and of course had a lot of fun with this one.

True to tradition, Theo's costume was homemade and consisted of a painted box. This year however, he was a robot instead of a Rubik's cube. When the time came to trick or treat, William outright refused to wear the doomsday prophet signs that I made for him, so he ended up dressed as a young James Herriot.

Theo dressing in his robot costume

I am pretty sure that William wouldn't have pulled it off as well as this guy

This year we also had the addition of two little friends. Recently, we met a Japanese family that returned to Fukuyama from living in the U.S. for two years. There children were really bummed when they found out they would not be trick or treating this year, so we invited them along to our rounds of the few foreigners in our neighbourhood.

All in all, we visited 5 of our neighbours and the children soon had a brimming bag of treats. Everyone had a fun evening and once again Halloween was a success!