Halloween arrives early in Japan.

Trick or Treat.

Just before lunch today the Mrs. informed me that the kids had been invited to a Halloween party this evening.  Okay... I guess we need some costumes.

(T.O:  Kaz is still coughing and sneezing) The witches costume is actually a hold over from Sachon's post college, pre-David days.  So that was easy enough to put together.  However, the boy was lacking.  My glorious wife thought maybe he could be a cowboy.  Put him in my good hiking hat and he could carry his toy gun.  I immediately nixed the idea as it required no inspiration from me and we didn't have any chaps.  Looking around the house I noticed the mostly empty box that the good beer comes in.  I quickly transferred the last of the beer to the fridge (quick thinking on my part) and got to work.  With some scissors, white paper, most of a roll of tin foil, some pencil crayons and most of a roll of tape we were done.

So after dinner and some last minute directions from the Mrs. (it is an orange house with a green roof somewhere near here on the map) we were off.  Now by this point I had managed to squeeze a few more details from my betrothed and determined it was an English Language school English party.  Originally the plan was to drop the kids off from 7:30 to 9:00 but the boy and girl were both too chicken to go it as a pair so I offered up my services.  Grudgingly.  It was everything I expected.

The teacher/owner of the school is a Chinese woman from Hong Kong who has lived in Kagoshima for the last 17 years.  She is married to a Japanese man and has some elementary age kids.  She was very nice.  As expected I was asked to say a few words of greeting at the beginning.  Then there were the usual excruciatingly painful games, "What is this picture?" (half the kids aren't listening, a quarter don't show any signs of comprehension).  A third of the way through the games the boy decided he was done.  Not fun.  Also his silver cap was a total thermal trap.  I had to open up the top like a fully popped pan of stove top popcorn.  It helped.  We made it to snack time.  After that I gave another little speech about Halloween in Canada which Kiyomi did a very game job of translating.  I answered some questions and then gave my little inspirational speech about learning English (ironically I give it in Japanese so people know what I am talking about).  The junior high girls were paying attention.  With that done we gave out some treats and called it a night.  It is a great blessing that I do not teach Eikaiwa any more. 

The costume should get some good play here for the next week or so. Oh I forgot.  Kohei's robot pose in the second picture almost made Sachon wet herself.  She went off.  It is a good pose.

Love out.