My family & I spent last weekend in Kawasaki, a large city only an hour by train from western Tokyo, and the place to be for Halloween in Japan. Kawasaki hosts one of the nation's largest annual Halloween parades on the last weekend in October, and going to watch it has turned into a holiday tradition of sorts for my family.
Given the propensity for cosplay (dressing up as fictional characters from TV shows, video games, comic books, etc) within Japan, it's no surprise that Japanese youth take to Halloween like ducks to water. The costume aspect of the holiday is emphasized more than any other. Kawasaki is the stage on which to strut your stuff, to see and be seen, and to show off for amateur photographers. It's like the World Series of cosplay.
We stepped off the train at Kawasaki Station in mid-afternoon on Saturday Oct. 29. The station itself is a huge cavernous structure, well able to accommodate the massive crowds that surge through it at peak times.
Welcome to Kawasaki!
This lovely sign caught our attention as we left the station.
I would have liked to arrive a bit earlier, but my daughter had a half-day of school in the morning, so we had to settle for a late departure. Thus we were quite hungry after the train ride and decided food was the first order of business.
This bistro on the edge of La Cittadella shopping mall is my favorite Kawasaki restaurant. Their foie gras is divine!
After lunch we bought tickets to see the new Jason Bourne movie. Going to the theater in Japan is a rare treat. At ¥1800 per person, it's an expensive luxury that my family reserves for special occasions. Happily for foreigners, major Hollywood movies are popular here, and they are often shown in the original English with Japanese subtitles.
With an hour to kill before the movie, we walked over to our hotel and checked in. To properly enjoy the main Halloween festivities on Sunday, we like to spend the whole weekend in Kawasaki. That way we wake up fresh & ready to make the most of our day, without worrying about being tired out from a long train ride before the fun even starts.
The Ailinn Hotel is nothing fancy, but it did have one nice perk: a massage chair in our room provided endless entertainment for my daughter, and relief for my wife's tired feet.
The movie was every bit as good as I expected. Afterward we strolled through La Cittadella, a picturesque shopping center with European architectural influences, looking for a dinner spot. La Cittadella is the epicenter of Halloween in Kawasaki, hosting many fun events throughout the weekend and serving as a gathering place for parade participants.
It was fun to crowd-gaze from atop the walkways winding around La Cittadella's main courtyard.
Halloween Tower rearing high above the entrance to La Cittadella's movie theater.
No sooner had we sat down for dinner than a gong rang out across the outdoor mall, announcing the start of a nighttime Halloween performance. Everyone in the restaurant rushed to the balcony to see what was going on. We had a spectacular vantage point to observe the show, although my daughter had to keep jumping up & down to see over the tall railing.
An impressive light show cast huge animated spooks across the facades of buildings around the courtyard.
A ring of dancers flitting through the night as the glow of the light show washes over them.
Feeling tired but happy, we stumbled back to our hotel to get some much needed rest.
Waking early the next morning, we gulped down a hurried breakfast, checked out, and headed back to La Cittadella for the weekend's main event. After changing into our costumes in the restroom, we posed for some pics before plunging into the thronging crowd.
The contrast between my daughter and I couldn't be more clear.
My wife looking cute in her bunny ears. Wait a sec, who's the peeping Tom in the background!?
While waiting for the parade to start, our main objective was to walk around and snap pictures of as many cool costumes as possible. Most of the mall shops provided trick-or-treating so my daughter enjoyed building up her candy stash as the day went on. Sadly trick-or-treating hasn't caught on in Japan to the extent it has in other countries, being mainly limited to big events in commercial areas such as this. But it was fun anyway. One interesting difference with the US is that instead of saying "trick or treat!" to get the loot, in Japan you are encouraged to say "Happy Halloween!"
Here's a few of the best costumes we saw:
At last it was time for the parade itself. With upwards of 2500 costumed participants, it was sure to be a treat! Although not scheduled to start until 2:30 pm, we picked a roadside spot half an hour early to be sure of getting a good position toward the front of the crowd. Even so, we were almost too late as many other people had the same idea. It started with a special Star Wars parade to promote the new movie coming in December:
Following the Star Wars spectacle, the main parade commenced. Split into 4 groups, each preceded by a kind of musical float with dancers, the whole thing lasted close to an hour. I got so many good pics, it was hard to pick only a few to highlight here:
Whew, what a day! I'd call that another successful Halloween adventure. And I'm sure we'll be back again because no place in Japan does Halloween better than Kawasaki. If you're in the country this time next year, I highly recommend checking it out. Until next time, keep calm and Steem on!
Links for more info
Previous entries in my Japan Diary series:
Hanging out with the ghosts of GeGeGe no Kitaro
Strolling around Showa Kinen Park
Expedia info for Ailinn Kawasaki Hotel: https://www.expedia.com/Yokohama-Hotels-Ailinn-Kawasaki.h8403209.Hotel-Information
Kawasaki tourism info: http://www.travelkawasaki.com/about-kawasaki/
La Cittadella (Japanese): http://lacittadella.co.jp/
Kawasaki Halloween (Japanese with English information available): http://lacittadella.co.jp/halloween/
For more posts about cryptocurrency, finance, travels in Japan, and my journey to escape corporate slavery, please follow me: @cryptomancer
Image credits: all images in this post are photographs taken on my iPhone. Close-ups of costumed individuals were taken with the knowledge and consent of those individuals.