The Gotemba Minami ALT: Happy Halloween!

I know it's November and Halloween is technically over, but this is the first chance I have had to write in a while. Things have been busy lately, which is good!

I want to start off with saying that Halloween in the States feels very different than Halloween here in Japan. (It's better in Japan!) I stopped celebrating Halloween when I was around 15 years old (about all of my students' ages) and really haven't done much to acknowledge it since. Don't get me wrong, growing up I actually LOVED Halloween! All the candy, cute costumes and cool Disney Halloween cartoons and other shows that would come on TV were my favorite parts about Halloween! I loved going Trick-or-Treating with my little sister in costumes our Grandmother made for us, and then coming home to pour all of our candy and chocolates out onto the floor to make two huge piles! When you're a kid, that's the best! But somewhere along the way, the innocence that can be Halloween was stolen from me. I struggled with even acknowledging the day with my students, but I soon realized, it wasn't about me - it's about them, and Halloween was what I taught them it was. So, slightly reluctantly, I decided to revisit the childhood magic that is Halloween, for my students.

I don't have any children of my own yet, and this may sound silly, but I feel like I understand parents a little bit more now when they say things like "you can see holidays through your kids' eyes and suddenly it's like it's brand new again; like your experiencing it for the first time". That's not an exact quote, but that's the basic gist of it.

I had an idea from a fellow ALT friend of mine to get small costumes and set them on the kids' desks to find when they walk into class. So, I raided a couple 100 Yen shops and that's just what I did! The plan was to bribe them with candy so they would wear their costumes during class. (Although most kids really didn't need bribing). And, they had to say "Trick-or-Treat" to me at some point during the class in order to get candy. I'm sure their favorite part of the day was getting candy, but my favorite part was seeing and hearing their excitement as soon as they walked through the door. No one was expecting to have a witch's hat, a wizard's hat or bunny ears on their desk during class (to name a few). I think Halloween at Gotemba Minami may have actually been more fun for me than it was for them.

To sum it up, I want to thank my students for bringing the innocent magic back that is Halloween and I want to thank Japan (especially Disney) in general for making everything for Halloween so colorful, beautiful, cute and innocent.