Sunday, October 30, 2011

Happy Halloween!

If you didn't know already, Halloween is my favorite holiday.  Halloween in Japan, while not non-existent, lacks the substance and creativity of Halloween in the US. There is no trick-or-treating, no American candy (which I find to be far superior), few costumes and most kids don't really understand it.  So, I teach extraordinary Halloween lessons. This year, I made 3 girls cry from fear/ disgust.

The first part of the lesson was just introducing Halloween words, then we moved into the serious stuff.
First, I got very serious and told them that I had cut off the fingers and skin, and took out hearts, brains and eyeballs of last year's bad students- then to make sure the current students would be good, I made everyone touch said items. 


I prepared 5 bags of said items:
Eyes= pickled quail eggs (better than grapes because they pop if you squeeze too hard).
Brains= konnyaku (http://www.kki.yamanashi.ac.jp/~t04kg014/konnyaku.gif).
Skin: katsuo bushi (sliced, dried bonito).
Heart: one day peeled tomatoes, the next day canned peaches.
Fingers: Chikuwa http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Chikuwa.jpg


After feeling everything and getting thoroughly grossed out the students guessed what each item actually was. It so fun!  

At school, I dressed up as a black cat, but for the annual ALT Halloween party, I dressed up as a mummy.  The party which is hosted in my town at a campsite, is really fun because for all the ALTs and friends not from the US or Canada, it is a special treat because they didn't have Halloween growing up.  Almost everyone gets really into it, with great, often homemade, costumes. The winner this year was Muammar Gaddafi, although there was a great Mr. T, trio of Wizard of OZ characters, and the three blind mice.

For my costume, I went to the "dollar store" and bought A LOT of gauze and wrapped myself up from head to toe.  I wrapped over some leggings and a sweatshirt to ensure warmth!  People really liked it. The only problem was that my face got really itchy after a few hours! 

Mr. T and Gaddafi

Wizard of OZ

Mummy!

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