Halloween in Japan?!

HaLLoWeeN

There was a Halloween Day at the bar where I work at. A lot of people came with their costume and were enjoying the atmosphere which is different with the usual days. Even though, Halloween is supposed to be an Christian event, it is becoming one of the Japanese's event and they have parties all over.

The Getting Candles

When I was reading a newspaper today, I found a very interesting article which was saying that there is a similar event to Halloween in Japan. On August 7 in the evening, children go around their neighbor's house and say "Give me candles or we will scratch you!!" at the entrance. Then people at the house give them small gift such as a little money and snacks. It is called Getting Candles and it is a part of the Star Festival. This was mainly held in Sapporo and Hokkaido which was the northern part of Japan until 30 to 40 years ago. The article explained that it is still popular in some areas of Hokkaido.

The area where I grow up or neither of my prents' home town do not have such event. So this article was very interesting and I was very surprised about the fact that there was something similar to Halloween but has been done for something completely different event in Japan.

The Drill

There was the drill at Shirokane Takanawa today from 9:30-11:30. It was the community people gather together and experience the work of the fireman such as fire fighting and chain saw training, and experience the situation at the real fire.

The issue to think about

The disaster training were very useful to know what we should do at the real situation, however, people there were talking about a serious problem. They are worried about the foreigners who live in the Minato-word because foreigners do not know anything when there is any disaster. Therefore, they are trying to make opportunity to let foreigners to know information about the disaster by putting a translator at the drill training. However, there were no foreigners at all other than people from Temple. Usually, those drill trainings are for the neighborhood associations and people notice those events by looking at the circular bulletin. However, foreigners do not belong to those community and they don't know the way to inform such things to the foreigners.

The fire fighting demonstration by Shinagawa Prince Hotel.

People are watching the demonstration.

Emergency food tasting.

Minatoku Project: Interview with Nittasan

Leading to the Minatoku-kiumin festival, we interviewed Nittasan to interview him about the festival; how and why Temple started to join this festival as participants. We also asked him about the relationship with Minatoku now and in future.

Temple is perticipating some Minatoku community activities such as the festivals(Azabu festival as well), the drill training, teaching Japanese teachers how to teach English. Moreover, there are some students who goes to public schools in Minato word to teach japanese to kids who moved from abroad and have not been able to ajust to the Japanese school, culture, and language. According to Nittasan, local people know the name of Temple more than he expected. However, he wants people to know more about Temple and raise its popularity among the community. So maybe in future, in return of Temple doing volunteers and other things for this community, they will let up use their facilities and recognize us as a part of them.

Minatoku Project: the change of the theme

For the final project we were planning to do about Minatokuminn festival. Since it is Tokyo story class, we wanted to do something traditional Japanese. The traditional Japanese festival is something that is unique about Japan. So Nao and I were going to do project about Minatkuminn-festival.

But after we went to shoot the festival we had chance to talk with Nitta-san and we decided to expand the topic of our project. We got the idea from class today. So our theme will be "how it is for foreigners to go into the Japanese society feat. Temple." We decided to include Temple's activities with Minatoku, because Temple is a foreign university which is trying to be a part of Japanese community as a foreign institution. As the second step of our project, we are having an interview with Nittasan to interview him about the Minatokuminn-festival and other activities that Temple is doing to interact with Minatoku.

みなと区民祭り / Minato Citizens' Festival

'07 Minto Citizens' Festival was held on October 6 and 7, for two days at Shiba park and the areas around the park, such as Tokyo Prince Hotel and Zojyo-Temple.

The areas were divided into six areas and each area had different concept. For example, Prince Hotel area was named as "Concourse of gourmand and alcohol from all over the world" and people could enjoy unique food from 13 different countries such as Cuba, India, Australia.

Moreover, there was "Home Product area" in front of the Minato word office. This area had food, alcohol, sweets from all over Japan and many people were enjoying different food from different areas at the table which was prepared in the middle.

Other than the booth, there were parade by 26 groups of 2000 people, and performance by different groups on stage such as dance, Martial arts, and chorus.

HISTORY

This festival was first started to create a place where people communicate with each other. The festival has been held for 26 years and number of perticipants increased year by year. Now this festival has grown up to one of the major event in Minatoku which mobilize more than two hundred thousand people. Compare to other festivals, this festival is very safe because all the booth are managed by shopping arcade community people and organization which is approved by Minato-ku, and it contains no Tekiya(mountebank) which is booth paticurally come to festivals to sell their products and most of the time it is related to Yakuza.

I had chance to talk with two people from Red Brick shopping arcade who has been doing booth at this festival since it's started. They said "it had no publicity when its started, and there were not many people who can buy our products which we were selling. So we bought food from each other's booth to help each other." They also said they are very surprized that this festival had grown to this big, and very international as well. 26 years ago, there were almost no foreigner at this festival but the foreign participants has been growing along with the festival growth. I asked them what they expect the festival to be from now on and they answered, "We expect it to continue growing and being held so people from Minatoku have a place to communicate. It is one of the very important tradition for Minatoku People and also for shopping arcade community in Minatoku. So we hope it to never die out."

TEMPLE

Temple was also involved in this festival from this year. There were volunteer workers from Temple which come and help out this festival from several years ago, but this year was the first time for them to be deeply invorved. Total of 4 groups from Temple joined this festival and make Temple's name known to more people.