The kids dressed up for Halloween in 2009

Every year in October, there is a great children’s Halloween Party in Kamiyamada Onsen, the hot spring section of town.  Though Halloween is still tow weeks away, this years party was on the 18th, and we took all three kids to the party for some pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating and apple bobbing.

Anri came up with the idea of dressing Noah up as Mater, the character from the Disney/Pixar film Cars.  It was also her idea to have Daddy put in long hours to construct it out of carboard, duct tape and papier mache, but anything to make the kids have a good day!  Anyway, Sara went to the party as Kiki, the little witch from the Miyazaki film Kiki’s Delivery Service, while Anri was decked out as Dorothy from the The Wizard of Oz (Mommy and Daddy were up until 4 am the night before sewing the thing!).

Our good friend Tyler — an American originally from Seattle who runs a Japanese inn in Kamiyamada — was the coodinator, and has done a great job running this event for several years now.  Nobody here knows trick-or-treating, so Tyler went around the main road in Kamiyamada and got a whole bunch of businesses to agree to hand out candy and snacks to visiting kids in costumes.  with a map in hand, we marched the kids up and down the street, stopping at every listed place to fill their bags with candy.  It was then that I realized that despite the time I took to make Noah’s Mater costume, he didn’t want to wear it.  I had to wait until he fell asleep in his stroller before I was finally able to put it on him.

Pupkin Carving in Kamiyamada, 2009

Later, we did pumpkin carving.  Anri traced the face she wanted and I cut it out.  She and I (with a tiny bit of help from Sara) cleaned out the pumpkin and when it was finally done, it looked pretty good!

We also did some apple bobbing, which was thankfully very clean, since the apples all had long stems to grab onto with your teeth.  And there were other special things going on, such as taiko drumming, dancing by local geisha and a horse-drawn wagon ride.  There was also a costume contest.  There was no win for the Greys today, but they had a great time.

Bobbing for apples in Kamiyamada, 2009

Photos of the Halloween Party and others taken in October are on The Kodak Gallery Website here.