Halloween in Japan

Halloween this year was pretty cool. Marin dressed up in the same beautiful Afghani dress that Jeff sent home last year. Is it bad that I like to reuse our super cute costumes if they still fit?

Marin loved the whole evening. We went around our little military housing neighborhood and found some pretty cute Halloween displays and lots of candy. Even the fire station down the street handed out candy. Marin had fun with all that, and then when her Halloween bag was full, she was excited to go home and hand out candy to Trick-or-Treaters. She enjoyed that even more!
We were surprised to find that most of the Trick-or-Treaters that came by were Japanese! They were brought on post by their American friends. Below is Marin with a large group of kids that came to the door. One mom wanted some pictures of her kids with Marin, so they all jumped in the picture. It was a lot of fun.
One of Marin's classmates, from her Japanese Kindergarten, came by too, and was excited to see her. When she saw her, she excitedly ran up to Marin saying her Japanese name that basically sounds like Maylin-chan! It was fun to meet Shiun and her family, but the language barrier kept us from communicating much.
Costume contest photo, taken at the commissary.


Sponge Bob!


Marin, handing out candy on our porch.


Spur of the moment photo of a mob of Trick-or-Treaters. What a treat for everyone! The Japanese kids love Halloween. Since Japan doesn't celebrate Halloween, I wonder where they got such great costumes.

Marin was in heaven!


The girl in the white dress is Shiun, from Marin's class. I'm guessing the other girl is her younger sister.

The best part about Halloween was that Jeff was with us. He travels a lot. Halloween happened to fall right between two back to back trips Jeff had to make to Virginia and Hawaii. The military wanted to send him straight from one to the other, but he pushed to come home in the middle of them for one day--Halloween. And then he was able to get home a day earlier, so we got him for nearly 48 hours. He's almost home from the second trip now, and then we get him for 3 weeks before he's off the Northern Japan for two weeks. Our time together is very precious. Halloween would not have been the same without him!