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halloween (Page 11)

Cosplaying taxis with monster drivers to offer free rides to cosplayers in Shibuya this Halloween

Halloween in Japan keeps getting bigger and better every year, with cosplayers coming out in droves to celebrate the world of costumes and make-believe. This time around, Japanese car manufacturer Nissan is joining the fun with a fleet of taxis dressed up in Halloween costumes, complete with “monster drivers” behind the wheel.

The monsters and their vehicles will be helping fellow ogres and ghouls by offering free rides to people in costume in the Shibuya area on October 29 and 31. What’s more, the unusual vans promise to be so spacious, they’ll accommodate any type of outfit you’re wearing!

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Japanese lawyer: Making cosplay for others is copyright infringement

In about a week, Halloween, cosplayers‘ favorite holiday, will be upon us. Millions of people — increasingly including Japanese — will take to the streets in costume, and much of it will be cosplay. But some of this activity may actually be against Japanese law.

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Japan’s biggest yakuza organization tweets to announce that Halloween is cancelled this year

Ah Halloween. After Christmas, it’s easily the best time of the year to be a kid. You get to dress up, scare people with your friends, and then best of all… go to your local organized crime branch to get a giant bag of candy.

Such has been the annual tradition on Halloween for children who visit the headquarters of the Japanese yakuza group Yamaguchi-gumi in Kobe. But this year, Halloween has had an “unfortunate accident” and been cancelled, meaning the mob will be handing out no candy.

Wait… what? Japanese mafia? Halloween candy? What do these things have in common? Read on to find out!

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  • Oct 21, 2015

Tokyo Kawaii Musée in Harajuku lets you dress up for Halloween…in a kimono!

Here in Japan, Halloween may be a relatively new tradition, and we haven’t gotten to the point of dressing in costume at school or work (at least not at normal jobs), but there’s no denying we’re quickly embracing the seasonal event, especially with special sweets and beverages. With Halloween-themed parades and parties becoming more and more common, finding an attractive and appropriately playful costume is something an increasing number of people are thinking about this time of year.

Well, if you want something original and eye-catching, then how about renting a Japanese kimono as a Halloween costume? Of corse, you won’t be wearing it like a regular kimono, though!

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Dragon Ball Z’s Piccolo and Frieza show their Halloween spirit, help bring the holiday to Japan

For most of the western world, October is a month of ghastly ghouls and Halloween hijinx. But in Japan, Halloween wasn’t really celebrated up until fairly recently, and even now trick-or-treating at random houses is still a pretty uncommon occurrence.

This year however, Halloween has exploded in popularity. Retailers have been getting ready for the big night several months in advance, and even Pepsi Japan has released a spooky new flavor to celebrate. The pagan festival has become so popular that even some of the characters from Dragon Ball Z are joining in on the fun.

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  • Oct 10, 2015

Suntory comes out with sweet Lipton tea drink for Halloween — the Pumpkin Tea Latte!

With Halloween just around the corner, we seem to be virtually surrounded by pumpkins here in Japan. Not surprisingly, in addition to the usual pumpkin ornaments and decorations on display, we’re seeing a sudden increase in pumpkin flavored foods and sweets as well.

Japan has gotten into the Halloween spirit to such an extent this year that you can buy limited edition pumpkin-flavored tea in a bottle at supermarkets and convenience stores. And when a beverage involves not only pumpkin but tea from Lipton and a cute Halloween label to boot, well, let’s just say it gives us a lot to be happy about!

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Wanted: 2,300 people to dance like the walking dead at Halloween zombie party village in Tokyo

Halloween just keeps getting bigger in Japan. While stores are full of all sorts of cute paraphernalia to mark the celebration and a number of Halloween activities are marked on the calendar, there’s one very special event that’s bigger and more unusual than any other in Tokyo. In fact, it’s so popular the organisers sold all 2,000 tickets in one evening and are now offering an extra three hundred tickets to those who get in quick by applying online.

It’s the Zombie Party Village, which comes alive once a year with thousands of walking dead—all of whom are free to dance to their unbeating heart’s content without being bothered by angry mobs and cross-bearing priests. If you’d like to be a part of the 2,300-strong zombie dance collective, read on to find out all the details after the break.

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Universal Studios Japan unlocks its haunted hotel rooms, has a special menu for Halloween

Japan has been gearing up for Halloween since the end of August, but now that we’re actually into the correct month, we feel it’s acceptable to start posting Halloween-related articles. Today we’re introducing the Halloween festivities going on at Universal Studies in Osaka, Japan.

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Eat your eyeballs! Japanese traditional confectioner offers line of eye-grabbing Halloween sweets

With Japan’s growing love of Halloween, and it’s long-held affection for seasonal sweets, the country now gets a bumper crop of special desserts for the year’s spookiest holiday. So far, most of these have been Japanese brands of Western-style candies and cookies with a Halloween-themed package, or maybe with a limited-time pumpkin flavor, but one traditional Kawasaki-based confectionary chain is looking to change that with a lineup of edible eyeballs, zombie fingers, and other Japanese sweets that look bone-chilling and sound mouth-watering.

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“Pepsi Ghost” brings a mysterious new flavor for Halloween in Japan

Among brands who like to get adventurous with the flavors in Japan such as Kit Kat or Häagen- Dazs, Pepsi is certainly one of the most prolific. Past Pepsi flavors have included cucumber, strawberry milk, and salty watermelon.

This time, everyone’s favorite alternative to Coke has unleashed a new flavor called Pepsi Ghost, especially for the Halloween season. They’ve really outdone themselves too, because for this limited-edition outing the special flavor is unknown.

So unknown, in fact, that even after drinking about a litre of the stuff I still can’t quite put my finger on it.

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  • Oct 3, 2015

Trick or Meal? Nissin’s instant foods get Halloween makeover in four limited-edition products

With Halloween becoming an increasingly recognized event in Japan, we’re sure to be seeing plenty of products featuring pumpkins, black cats, ghosts and witches in shops across Japan as we enter the month of October. And the instant food market is no exception to the trend, as Nissin Foods, known around the world for their Cup Noodles, come out this month with four unique Halloween-themed instant food products.

That’s right, you can be sure to get a taste of Halloween this year, even if you have no time to cook!

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Japanese salarymen and OLs make company-wide music video of AKB48’s “Halloween Night” 【Video】

For the past two years AKB48 has asked fans and company staff to submit their own music videos to their newly released singles, and their latest track, “Halloween Night”, is no exception. While the song and official video are fairly typical AKB fare, the fan videos of it are really something to see.

And perhaps the best submitted music video so far belongs to the lovely employees at the Japanese internet advertising firm Cyber Agent. Men and women from every department shake and strut to the AKB Halloween beat, and watching it may cause you to suddenly want to work somewhere else.

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Japan starts getting ready for Halloween…in August?!?

As a kid, I loved Halloween. My brother and I would go all out decorating the house with tombstones, cobwebs, and corpses made out of old clothes stuffed with newspapers. Plus, how can you not like a holiday that gives you not only free candy, but an excuse to stay up past your bedtime eating it too?

So I’ve been happy to see how whole-heartedly Japan has been embracing Halloween, which each year seems to get bigger and bigger here. Some neighborhood shopping arcades have started inviting trick-or-treaters and passing out candy, and there are now multiple costume parades in the Tokyo area. As a matter of fact, Japan is so psyched for Halloween this year that stores started selling decorations in August.

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Tokyo’s Nakano to be transformed into cosplay heaven this Halloween for MAG Festa 2015

We’ve got the info on an upcoming event in Nakano, to be held on Saturday October 31; in other words, Halloween. The event will turn the area around Nakano Station, which includes Nakano Broadway, and Nakano Sun Plaza shopping areas, into anime heaven for the day. You’ll be able to get into the spirit of the holiday by dressing up in cosplay, snap some great photos of other people’s intricate cosplay creations, or just be content with watching the various costume parades and shows on offer.

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30 hours of pumpkin carving! The making of my anime fan art jack-o’-lantern【Photos & video】

Every year for Halloween I carve a pumpkin for myself and for the trick-or-treaters to enjoy, usually based on a popular Hollywood movie with costume potential. To commemorate my post at RocketNews24, however, for this year’s jack-o’-lantern I chose my first ever anime theme! I went with one of my favorites from this fall’s line-up, Gugure! Kokkuri-san (繰繰れ！コックリさん), available on Crunchyroll.

Both heartwarming and twisted (for the non-anime-initiated), the series is an outrageously wacky, slice-of-life comedy adapted from a four-panel comic strip by Midori Endō. The large cast is led by Kokkuri-san and the young girl Kohina; the former is a motherly, lonely fox spirit (originally from J­apanese folklore) with both human and animal forms, and the latter is a hardcore bocchi (loner) with a cup noodle addiction who claims to be an emotionless doll.

Read on to learn a little more about the show and the design process, as well as to get a nicer view of the lit-up pumpkin. There’s also a time lapse video that condenses 30 hours of carving into just over 11 minutes!

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Kyary Pamyu Pamyu dresses up as the Corpse Bride, bumps into Tim Burton

How can anyone not love Kyary Pamyu Pamyu? She’s cute, kooky, and occasionally ooky – and she recently dressed up as Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride! Kyary shared several snaps on her official Twitter account of herself getting made up as the Corpse Bride, hitting the streets for some spooky fun, and even meeting the great man himself!

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Funasshi’s unofficial mascot Satosshi celebrates Halloween 2014 in his own special way!【Photos】

The inimitable Mr. Sato is such a big fan of Funasshi, the unofficial jiggly pear mascot of Funabashi City, that he even created his own mascot-to-the-mascot, Satosshi. This Halloween, Satosshi decided to head down to the famous Shibuya crossing to make friends with fellow costume-wearing Tokyoites.

Might there be other, kindred spirit Funasshi fans there? Will Satosshi be busted as an unofficial impersonator? Could Mr. Sato’s journalistic efforts be thwarted by a sudden attack of deadline confusion? And worse still, what if no one recognises him? Join us after the jump for a photo report from Satosshi’s big night out.

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This year, Tokyo’s Shibuya neighborhood made a major push to establish itself as the place to celebrate Halloween in Japan’s capital. Things got off to a pretty low-key but still impressively creative start with a costume contest on one of the local train lines, but that was nothing compared to how jumping Shibuya was on the night of October 31.

Unfortunately, when you funnel that many people into one place, some of them are going to exhibit some pretty poor manners, as evidenced by the mounds of litter some revelers left behind. In response, volunteers sprang into action cleaning up the trash, but instead of a pat on the back for their hard work, some Twitter users decided to take them to task for what they felt was a shameless play for attention.

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Mannequin prankster returns for more Halloween fun on the streets of Osaka

Last year, we introduced you to the Mannequin Guy, a 2m tall (6,6″) American dude living in Japan who took to the streets on Halloween 2013 to give passersby a scarily good laugh. Well, we’re happy to report that Mannequin Guy returned again this Halloween, and there’s even a video compilation of all the best bits of his routine!

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A little late for Halloween, here are some haunted photos from Thailand

So we might be a little late to the party on this one – on account of being at other parties that involved a lot of drinking – but we’re still taken with the Halloween spirit, and it looks like Thailand is too, because we managed to scrounge up a bunch of spooky, possibly “haunted” photos from the area recently.

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