Hello and Happy Halloween from your friends in Japan. While Halloween was originally a foreign custom to the Japanese, it shouldn’t surprise you that they’ve embraced it with much enthusiasm, considering their love of cosplay. While you might think of trick-or-treating or perhaps hitting a party with friends when you think of October 31st, in Japan the custom has become to gather en masse in Shibuya, the hip Tokyo neighborhood that’s home of the most famous intersection in Asia, and gather to show off amazing costumes. The Halloween festivities are so popular that this year police will be closing several streets in the area, creating a giant pedestrian only zone — oddly called 歩行者天国 hokosha tengoku, or “Pedestrians’ Heaven” in Japanese — to allow people to safely gather. At the rate Halloween’s popularity is growing, it might eclipse the Comiket doujinshi event as the premier place to see amazing cosplay in Japan. (Photo credit.)
If you’re staying in tonight, you might be looking for something delightfully scary to watch, and happily I have some anime recommendations for you. First is the classic Higurashi When They Cry, an extremely dark and interesting anime and visual novel about a series of mysterious murders in a rural village in 1983, and the supernatural reasons behind them. Then there’s Another, a well-executed horror about a curse that revisits a certain school, causing students and their family members to die in gory ways. One show I’m working through now is Yami Shibai (Dark Theater), a series of very short Japanese ghost stories guaranteed to send shivers up your spine in ways that only Japanese horror can. We hope you have a great and safe Halloween!
J-List always offers you lots of great cosplay products, recently popularity of “otokonoko” underwear, outerwear, and other cosplay products has been really exploding, so we posted some new items today. See all otokonoko cosplay items here, or browse naughtier items here.
