Halloween is well-known in Japan, especially by children and their parents, but the actual trick-or-treating that kids so look forward to in the US is strangely absent wherever you go here. It was a nice surprise therefore, when we took Anri to her first Halloween party in Kamiyamada Onsen today -- a party which included a march around town to receive treats.



Anri picked out her costume on her own, from a selection of outfits at the local Toys R Us. Her choice: Umm...a punpkin fairy, I suppose. She liked it, is what matters, we supposed, so that is what she wore all day today during the party and trick-or-treating.

The event was part of the Kamiyamada Onsen Soba Festival. Throw a food event of any kind in this country and the Japanese will flock to it! Kamiyamada Onsen is the hot spring resort area of our town, and features a number of small and large hot spring inns -- most of them in the traditional Japanese style. Tyler Lynch, an American who is the Proprietor-in-training of the Japanese inn, Kamesei, invited us to go to the party, which he led. Either he, or somebody else, went through the enormous trouble of making arrangements with numerous local businesses to hand out candy and snacks to the costumed kids walking about town. Without this kind of preparation, nobody would know what they were expected to do in the face of trick-or-treaters.



The party began with a march in front of the costume judges. Then, small groups of kids began carving jack-o-lanterns, another relatively unknown Halloween craft over here. After a telling of the story of Halloween, the kids, over 130 of them, were divided into about a dozen groups and led to the various participating hotels, shops and other businesses for their treats. It was a lot of walking, but Anri would later go home with quite a bit of sweets and snacks. One place, a fruit stand, gave out a banana and a persimmon to each child. Some places gave out individual treats, while others gave out large bags of stuff. One of the businesses, a photographer's studio, had stools set up outside for a group photo of the kids.



Halfway through, Anri got tired of all the walking and chose to ride out the rest of the way on Daddy's shoulders. She never tired of the events, though, and had a great time wearing her little orange...pumpkin, uhh, fairy (??).

For more photos of this event, please take a look at the album Anri 10-2006 in our Photo Gallery.

Anri loves to draw, and for a while it was a challenge to keep her confined to pads of paper rather than walls, windows, furniture and appliances. Over the last several weeks, things have been really busy here, with not much time to sit down and update the website. But what I saw after coming home from work today prompted me to get this out to everyone.

Check this out. According to Tomomi, Anri did this on her own (Only the name and date were written by me).



In recent months, Anri has drawn many pictures of herself, her family and friends, but none of the drawings have been done in this kind of detail. It is worth noting that she was wearing a little cotton pink dress when she drew this. Perhaps this is just silly pride on the part of a parent, but this amazed me when I saw it.

She has also been keeping her own little picture diary for over a month now. Every day she sits down with me and I ask her what she did that day. She tells me (in her own little way) and I write it all down and date it. Then below that, she has a big space on the page to draw a picture of the day's events. She absolutely loves doing this and, best of all, it helps her to remember her day to day activities and the relevant English vocabulary.

Some day she'll be writing about her activities on her own, but for now, she just loves to draw!