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halloween (Page 11)

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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Shibuya celebrates Halloween 2014 with crazy costumes and huge crowds

While you might not see a lot of trick or treaters out in Japan, if you find yourself in Tokyo, specifically Shibuya, you’re sure to see some original and inspiring costumes. Let’s take a look at some of the best homemade and store-bought costumes spotted in Shibuya this Halloween.

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Go to hell: Unzen Hot Springs invites visitors to take an infernal stroll through a field of deadly hell-mouths

Welcome to Unzen, Kyushu, a sulphurous field of geothermal activity so inhospitable to life that its boiling hot springs and gas jets go by the name of jigoku or hells. This Halloween, allow us to be your Virgil and guide you through this strange world where eerie noises drift from hellish craters, clouds of foul-smelling gas confuse the mind and Christian martyrs were once boiled to death!

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Happy Halloween! Time to decorate your persimmon!

As we’ve discussed earlier, Japan has been really getting into the Halloween spirit as the years go on. However, there are still a few Halloween traditions that aren’t easy to carry out. While Japan loves any excuse to cosplay, you still won’t find many, if any, children going door-to-door in their neighborhood begging for candy come October 31. You can, of course, find good ole orange pumpkins in Japan for some Japanese-style Jack o’ lantern carving, but they aren’t available everywhere and can be quite expensive. Japanese pumpkins (kabocha), on the other hand, are too meaty and tough to elegantly cut designs out of. So what’s a Halloween-loving resident of Japan to do? Decorate persimmons, of course!

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Tokyo’s Shibuya holds its first Halloween costume contest aboard a train, we ride along

Back before Halloween became as popular in Japan as it is today, Tokyo expats looking to celebrate the holiday would stage impromptu costume parties on the last car of the JR Yamanote loop line. At the time, though, most Japanese people weren’t familiar with Halloween, and this tended to freak the indigenous locals out, leading Japan Railways to eventually crack down on the festivities.

Things have changed a lot in the last 15 years, though. Tokyo is starting to seriously get into the Halloween spirit, so much so that another rail company, Tokyu, actually held a Halloween costume contest onboard one of its trains, and we went to check it out.

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Celebrate Halloween with our recipe for jack-o’-lantern nikuman steamed buns【RocketKitchen】

Growing up, every year as Halloween approached, I could feel a sense of dread creeping up on me. It wasn’t the prospect of being hunted by werewolves or getting lost in a haunted house that frightened me, though.

I was terrified that someone would give me raisins when I went trick-or-treating.

Honestly, I understand that some people don’t approve of eating nothing but candy on Halloween, and there’s a valid point in trying to balance out your diet on All Hallows’ Eve. Do you have to do it with something as soulless as raisins, though, especially when you could use our recipe to whip up some tasty and jack-‘o-lantern steamed buns instead?

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Because of its time zone, holidays come to Japan several hours sooner than the rest of the world. Last weekend, Halloween came especially early, though, with parades of costumers being held in both Kawasaki and Tokyo’s Roppongi.

But even as Halloween continues to become more and more popular in Japan, one thing that hasn’t changed is the way most people get around by public transportation. Just about everyone takes the subway, whether you’re a student, businessperson, or living snowman from Disney’s Frozen.

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Adorable character hot pots are this fall’s kawaii-est foods

No country does cute food better than Japan, and the latest trend in adorable edibles is fall hot pots stuffed with cute characters that look way too good to eat!

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Late to the game, but Japan does Halloween right【Video】

Ask any Westerner what’s so special about October 31 and you will get the same answer: Halloween – a modern-day version of the ancient Celtic harvest festival Samhain. In Japan, however, October 31 was just any old day until fairly recently, with the haunted hijinks never really catching on until a few years ago.

But here’s the kicker: the Japanese might already be doing Halloween better than we do! 

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Yo-kai Watch mania has even reached the vegetable world! Here’s a Halloween pumpkin roundup!

There are still two weeks to go until Halloween, but pumpkin-carving in Japan is already in full swing! And it looks like it’s the new kid on the anime block, Yo-kai Watch, that’s getting all the jack-o-lantern attention this year.

When I used to teach kids in Japan, there were some elementary students who, upon being given a worksheet, would immediately turn any circle on the page into Doraemon’s face. Now, it seems, the face of choice to draw (or indeed carve) into any empty circular space is Jibanyan’s!

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Disney characters dress up as Bearbricks for Halloween, results range from cute to disturbing

Okay, Rocketeers, it’s time for another round of Cute or Creepy? Earlier this month we looked at some key chains made out of dried sea cucumbers that clearly fell into the latter category. The deck was kind of stacked against them, though, seeing as how most of us don’t really think of the spineless sea creatures as particularly cute to star with.

Today, we’re looking at something a little more visually appealing: Disney characters, and not just any old Disney characters, as Mickey and his pals are all dressed up for Halloween. What’s more, the whole gang is bear-shaped, thanks to a collaboration with toy line Bearbrick.

How could this be anything other than completely adorable? Allow us to show you.

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