For class tonight I taught three of my students to carve jack-o-lanterns out of small green Japanese pumpkins. They did really good considering it was their first time.
Halloween in this country is not really celebrated, except by English teachers and Mormons. The Japanese occasionally have parties, but most people I have spoken with outside the church have never been to a Halloween party. No one in Japan does trick or treating of course, and pumpkin carving is so uncommon that everyone has been really impressed with even the simple carving I did to show my classes.
The Halloween phenomena at church is likely a result of many years of missionary influence. Every ward and branch in the country has a Halloween party, but no one seems to know why. My boss said to me the other day, "Every year we have a Halloween party at the church. We don't know why we have it, but we must have it." I wasn't sure if her English use of the word 'must' meant that she really thought that somehow church policy or culture dictated that this little branch in Japan should celebrate a commercially driven pseudo-pagan holiday that promote adolescent mischief and premature tooth decay, or simply that because they have been doing Halloween parties for so long that to not do them would be weird.
This is Shoichiro. He is 14. Incidentally, his grandfather is a farmer on shodoshima island near here and he grew the second largest pumpkin in Japan this year. He is in Portland this weekend for the international pumpkin carving festival.
This is Tatsuya. He is 13 or 14 and he plays soccer with Shoichiro every Saturday pretty much all year long. His pumpkin was the most artful of the three. The girl in the white shirt in the background is Tatsuya's little sister, Ai. She was the first to get her pumpkin cut open and I think had the most fun of the three.
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