Weird Tales from Japan – Ubazakura

One book I enjoyed reading before I came to Japan was Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. It was published in 1904 and is a collection of weird and ghostly tales from Japan. Since it’s Halloween, I’ve picked a story called Ubazakura, which couldn’t be more appropriate for a blog about Japan and babies. Ubazakura  Three hundred years ago, in the village called Asamimura, in the district called Onsengori, in the province of Iyo, there lived […]

Japan Adopts Halloween

I don’t think Halloween is anywhere near to reaching its full potential in Japan, but I have definitely seen the shopping centers step up their bid to impose this spooky holiday on the masses. The orange on black colour combo has taken over my local shopping center, and Tokyo Times report the same happening in the capital. I wonder how long it will be before Halloween reaches the horribly commercial levels of Japanese Christmas?  […]

My gullible students!

Yesterday was our Halloween barbeque, which was a lot of fun. One activity we did was set up boxes with pictures of fingers, brains, worms and eyeballs on them. Inside were sausages, prunes, noodles and peeled grapes, and the kids were really quick to figure that out. The adults tend to have a better imagination and pulled some really icky faces when dipping their hands in the boxes. Two of […]