Halloween in Nishiokoppe, 2005

Today was Halloween, but there were only two children in Nishiokoppe wearing costumes. Nobody came to our door to trick-or-treat. Our pair of jack-o-lanterns was a lonely couple sitting patiently out in front of the house, glowing merrily in the night. However, none of this kept us from having a lovely time today. After hours of preparation, I coordinated, finally, the Nishiokoppe Elementary School Halloween party. Tomorrow will be Kamiokoppe’s, but there are only twelve students, so it shouldn’t be much trouble.

I actually began a couple of weeks ago, gathering candy and planning out my activities. On Thursday, I began sorting candy into bags, one for each teacher. Having ordered a box of 100 Tootsie Roll Pops, I began the lengthy task of making each one into a ghost using Kleenex and string. On Sunday, Ridge helped out immensely by giving each ghost (not all 100, though) two eyes and a mouth. Saturday saw me spend about three hours making cupcakes. Actually, they were cake-like brownies, but let’s not tell anyone. I used some mini-cupcake holders with Halloween decorations and baked about 50, then topped each one with a piece of candy corn (again, thanks to Mom). It only took me about four batches (small oven, remember?). Sunday was my marathon I-didn’t-leave-the-kitchen-for-six-hours day. I made about two dozen larger brownie/cupcakes and two dozen pumpkin shaped cookies. After searching the internet for an appropriate frosting recipe, I frosted the cupcakes with butter cream frosting and topped with Halloween sprinkles. Perhaps I should explain my concern about the frosting. See, powdered sugar, the vital ingredient for frosting, is sold in itty bitty packages here. Each one holds about 1/3 a cup. Most frosting recipes call for about two cups of sugar. Not too feasible for me. Anyway, the cupcakes got frosted and looked lovely. Sorry, I was too tired to take pictures. The cookies are what just about did me in. I wanted to make them for the middle school students. I thought to myself, “There are only 23 of them. I can do that.” So, I ordered a sugar cookie mix from our mail order company (same place I got the Tootsie Roll Pops) and got busy. Unfortunately, my pumpkin cookie cutter was so big that I could only bake four cookies at a time. Each batch took about 15 minutes. I’m not kidding when I say I spent the whole day in the kitchen. After they cooled, I melted some chocolate and drizzled on some lines.

It was all worth it, though. The teachers at the middle school each grinned and absent-mindedly said, “Oh, Halloween. Thank you very much,” as I handed them their large brownie/cupcake. This middle school kids were very excited when I came in with cookies. As part of class, the third years (most are about 15 yrs old), Kurata made them talk to me about the cookies. The boys seemed intrigued when their questions about women in America making these cookies yielded the reply of, yes, most people in America make cookies like this all the time. There was one extra cookie left over and I thought they were going to go nuts to get it. Issei worked very hard to produce the sentence in English, “If I eat this cookie, I will become very happy!” It wasn’t easy for him to put all that together!

After lunch, Aaron, Ridge, and Holt joined me, and the madness at the elementary school began. Earlier in the day, the older students had cut the tops of the pumpkins and began cleaning them. We arranged the common room and brought in the pumpkins. The kids eat lunch in table groups that are multi-aged, so we kept those same groups. That way, the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders could provide some guidance to the younger students. At first, everyone tried very hard to stay clean and not touch the pumpkin “guts” with their hands. Aaron and I fixed that. We walked around showing them how to really dig in and scrape it clean. You can see from the photos they are all wearing aprons. Several of the boys were a bit taken aback by my gooey fingers.
The "before" picture
Aaron and Ridge trying to understand what Akira is saying
Names on the pumpkin. The word, "nen" is referring to the word for "grade".
Mana, smiling at me as I take a picture
Oops, I forgot her name!
The line for face painting
Dangling Doughnuts

As students finished, they wrote their names on the backs of the pumpkins (not my idea – I’ve never heard of such a thing), and began to queue up for face painting. From that moment on, Aaron did not leave his stool until about 3:45pm. His face painting was a huge success. Other students entertained themselves by bobbing for apples. Actually, there were only halves. Apples are so expensive here that I couldn’t afford to spend my entire discretionary fund on 48 apples. My wonderful husband also strung some string across the room, from which we danged doughnuts for chomping – hands-free, of course. Other students played pin-the-nose-on-the-pumpkin. It was a wild and chaotic 90 minutes, but everyone seemed to have a blast.

The entire time, my children ran around like crazy, laughing, hiding, playing, and soaking up all the attention. Holt ended up sock-less after only ten minutes. Students all wear “inside shoes” at school, which Holt doesn’t have. He hates having anything on his feet, so he ditched his socks and just ran circles around the room with a Tootsie Roll Pop hanging out of his giggling mouth. At first, he had on his puppy dog ears, but they soon became more trouble than they were worth. Everyone got a big kick out of the boys being dressed up.

Finally, the kids were all told by the vice-principal to gather around. With the help of the older students (who sometimes seem to be able to read my mind), I passed out the treat bags the kids had made previously and explained the trick-or-treating. Then, in two groups (one upstairs and one down), they ran throughout the building saying (roll your R’s when you read this) “treeek or treeto.” I gave them each a brownie and bat ring. They seemed to love the bat and spider rings which are always around in the U.S. during this time of year. I don’t know if they had ever seen any before, though.

So many kids wanted their faces painted, Aaron ended up staying after school was over to finish up. I had to write a note to the vice-principal to explain Aaron was happy to stick around and paint everyone’s face if the kids wanted him too. It’s so much easier, sometimes, for us to communicate in writing. I think part of it is that Japanese sentence structure is opposite from ours. For example, they put the verb at the very end of the sentence. It’s a bit difficult to wrap your brain around.

Quick Japanese Lesson
Kore wa watashi no hon desu.
This my book is. (i.e. This is my book).
Fun, huh?

I’m interested to see how the party goes at Kamiokoppe tomorrow, as it is such a small group. The middle school students don’t have an opportunity to enjoy something like this, so I volunteered to go out to the middle school tomorrow after school and carve pumpkins with anyone who is interested. On Saturday, Aaron, the boys, and I walked down the road a ways to the pumpkin patch. Kaori (5th grader, lives across the street) and her 4yr. old brother, Ryuji, joined us. Aaron and Ridge selected and cut two nice pumpkins and we put them in the car, which Aaron had driven. The other children was so interested, we went ahead and began carving them as soon as we got home. Word must have gotten out, because before long, Kaori’s other siblings, Nana and Masanori joined us. It was a great little pumpkin carving party. Kaori helped Ridge as he carved his very own pumpkin. Thank goodness for pumpkin carving tools that are not too sharp! I promise I’ll post a picture of the pumpkins soon. I also took some video, which I can change into an MPG file when I have time. It was really perfect!

Here are some pictures we took at home. Holt wanted to dress up as Robin Hood, and Ridge insisted we take pictures. Can you tell which photo is the one where he kept saying, “Mommy, Mommy, take a picture of me right now!”?
"Mommy, what the heck is Ridge doing??"
Aaron said, "Show some teeth, boys!"
"I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille"

Lastly, here is a non-Halloween picture. I forgot to post it the other night. Ridge wanted me to show everyone how well he is using his chopsticks. (Check out those chopsticks!) Tuesday is his first day at pre-school, by the way! We are so excited!!