Halloween

I have never celebrated Halloween as much as I have this year. I taught a lesson on it at my visit school, used it as a theme for two classes at my base school, and talked about it for English club. I also attended my first real young adult Halloween party. October has been crazy busy! In between the Halloween stuff, I also participated in a volunteer day in Iwaki, Fukushima, had a Japanese version of Tinker Day, and volunteered at the JET booth at the Saitama International Fair.

My Halloween class for my visit school was taught 7 times, because that's how many classes there are. I started out with a worksheet with pictures of traditional Halloween items, pumpkin patch, Jack-O'-Lantern, costumes, haunted house, etc. Students worked in pairs to write the English word, in katakana if they didn't know the English spelling. Pumpkin patch was thrown out in favor of pumpkins as soon as I started making my way around the classroom, checking on their progress. I explained pumpkin picking using the word field as they already know and understand that word. Trick or treat bag was also reduced to candy bag. After they wrote down their guesses, I made them say the answers as a class, which was harder in some classes than others. Once I threatened to pick students one-by-one, the class usually went ahead and answered. After they answered correctly, I wrote the English word on the board and had them practice saying it. Then, I gave a brief explanation of the item and its use in American Halloween celebrations. Haunted house was very easy to explain. I first reminded them of the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland. And if that didn't get a big response, then I brought up obakeyashi, the Japanese version of a haunted house. These 'scary mazes' feature prominently at all school festivals.

The second activity was a Trick-or-Treat dialogue. The JTE and I demonstrated the dialogue, helped by my witch costume (black shirt and skirt and 100 yen witch's hat) and candy bag. Then the students practiced with each other. If they did the dialogue with me or the JTE, then they got real candy.

At my base school, the first year gaigo class is now learning how to express opinions and negotiate. Last Thursday's class was on making plans, so we went ahead and made it Halloween themed. Each pair had to pick costumes and whether to go to a party or go Trick-or-Treating. They had to write up a quick skit and perform it.

For English club, we had Halloween charades and made masks and bats out of construction paper.

The Halloween party was hosted by some JETs in Kawagoe, 6 stops down on my train line (also where my visit school is). It was pretty fun. We had lots of food and drinks (both alcoholic and non), thematic music, and towards the end some very trippy cartoon shorts from the 70s and 80s. A Witch's Night Out was the name of the strangest one. I made my costume for that one. I'll post pictures of it in a separate post.

All in all, my Halloween spirit has been thoroughly exhausted! Halloween isn't celebrated the same way here, but they know about it and are interested by it, which makes it a useful teaching tool. It does have some similarities to other aspects of Japanese culture. Obon is the festival of the dead. It's celebrated in August, but also has superstitions and lanterns associated with it.