Halloween

 I had to work pretty much all day on Saturday. I didn't see anything interesting on the way through Temonkan in to the school at 12:30 PM. I got to the school at 1:20 PM, and the lesson started at 1:30. Close to 2 PM, we were suddenly bombarded by the extremely loud sounds of a taiko (Japanese drum) group. Neither the student nor I had any idea of why there'd be taiko this early. We thought that maybe it might be something connected to Ohara Matsuri on Nov. 3rd, but that didn't make any sense. The drumming continued on for another 30 minutes, with short breaks between songs. When my lesson ended, I ran outside to see what I could find. 

There was nothing on the streetcar street running in front of the school and City Hall, and nothing in the boulevard park running from City Hall down to the bay. The drumming had stopped for another break, and I had nothing to work with. Then it started up again, so I followed it to the parking garage beside City Hall. There, in the basement level of the garage were about 20 people in street clothes playing a bunch of drums. I only had a couple minutes before my next lesson started, so I went back into the school rather than trying to take photos or asking someone what they were doing. I assume that they were practicing for Ohara. The noise ended about half an hour later.

I had a longer break between lessons from 3:30 to 5:10 PM, so I went to Tully's coffee shop in Tenmonkan, about a 5 minute walk from the school. I didn't see anything Halloween-related  during that time. Instead, I just sat in Tully's, reading SpyxFamily. It's a silly manga about a spy in a fictional European city that has to get close to a target, Donovan Desmond, from a fictional eastern European city to assassinate him. The job requires putting together a fake family, where the child enters an elite elementary school that the target's son will be enrolling at. The "hero", Loid Folger, rents a young girl (Ania) from an orphanage, then gets into an agreement with a young woman, Yol (Yol needs a date for a party on a Saturday night, in exchange she'll pretend to be Loid's wife and Ania's step mother for a few weeks). What Loid doesn't know is that Yol is a top-notch assassin, and Ania was created by the government as an ESPer (she can read minds). For the first two books, SxF is a sitcom as Loid and "family" stumble through their mission to approach Desmond.

Actually, there was a bit more interesting happening Friday night. I had a class from 7-8 PM. When I got out, I saw a couple people in amateurish zombie make-up returning from a Konbini carrying bags of snacks and entering a side door of a bank. I assume there was a company party that night. And, when I got into Tenmonkan at the main walkway, a group of 20 or so people in costumes (monsters, superheros, etc.) were walking along holding trash bags and tongs. A few of them attempted to pick up cigarette butts from the sidewalk with the tongs, but otherwise everyone was just talking and joking with each other. Nothing worth taking photos of, and I couldn't tell if this was a work crew put together by the City, or if they were employees of the area shops.

Back to Saturday, my classes ended at 9 PM. I walked along streetcar street, hoping to see cosplayers riding one of the streetcars, or drunk people in makeup coming out of a bar in the middle of Tenmonkan. But, nothing. However, at one intersection in the Tenmonkan complex, I ran into two very beautiful women wearing Chinese vampire outfits (bright red China girl dresses, batwing headbands, wigs and fangs). I was about to ask if I could take their picture, but they walked away in the opposite direction and it felt too awkward to try to follow them. (I did also see one guy, a westerner, but I have no idea from what country, absolutely massive, in a Thor costume with bulked up foam rubber arms, going into MOS Burger with his son. Again, I was going to ask to take a photo, but he got into MOS before I had the chance.)

About 4 years ago, Amu Plaza had a live music party the Saturday night before Halloween that was an absolute blast. The following year, they'd scaled back to just a DJ and a bunch of people in costumes. Two years ago, they had a few food booths and someone doing zombie makeup, but no real music. Last year, there was almost nothing Saturday night, and a children's trick or treat parade through the department stores Sunday morning. This year, Amu spent the Saturday putting up Christmas lights and their plastic light "tree." I went up to the main train station on Sunday, and the tree was finished, and the only other thing they had in the plaza were a couple tables selling jewelry and handcrafts. Sigh.

The only other Halloween news for Japan as a whole, according to the newspaper websites and some TV news stations, was that the number of cosplayers in Shibuya was way down from last year (there was a bit of disorderly conduct and vandalism last year that the government swore they'd crack down on). This year, the Shibuya district was flooded with cops in uniform. The Yomiuri paper (which is more conservative and ultra-nationalist) over-reported the numbers of revelers in cosplay, while the more centrist Japan Times, and left-leaning Asahi showed that the area was mostly deserted, except for office workers heading home, and police patrols. The Japan Times stated that the real Halloween costumed partyers were in other cities, where they were ignoring requests to stay home, and instead were packing into various bars (obviously, that wasn't happening in Kagoshima).

For me, just another boring night of boredom.