Halloween in Japan and “Holy Lands” in Tokyo
There are just two days left to enter our Halloween Giveaway, an awesome chance for you to win one of several figures as well as coupons for our online shop. This also means our sitewide 5x bonus points on all purchases from our shop will be over soon! To enter our giveaway, see our blog post here or just click the image below.
I had a fun weekend bumming around Tokyo, enjoying the various shops and bars and museums the city has to offer. I found myself with some free time, and since my hotel was next to the Shinjuku Gyoen Park, I decided to visit. The sprawling park is a beautiful splash of greenery that all visitors to Tokyo can appreciate, but it’s extra-special to fans of Shinkai Makoto’s beautiful film The Garden of Words, about a young student who’s interested in designing shoes and a woman he encounters who’s having trouble dealing with issues in her life. While I was sitting peacefully in the gazebo from the film, two tourists from Germany and South Korea joined me in my “pilgrimage to the holy land” (what visiting sites seen in anime is known as), reminding me that anime is more than just a fun thing to watch, but an underground culture that connects every fan in every corner of the world. Two days later a typhoon descended on Japan, so I went back to the Garden of Words, Kirin Beer in hand this time, to spend some quiet time in the rain.
While in Tokyo I was surprised to see quite a few people celebrating Halloween in Japan early, roaming the streets of Shinjuku in lavish costumes, so eager were they to start their celebrations. Halloween in Japan has become positively huge, as Japanese fans of all ages take the opportunity to dress up in amazing cosplay creations and show them off to everyone, usually in the streets of Shibuya, which has become Ground Zero for Halloween culture. It’s getting so big it’s starting to affect public safety, and the Japanese police have mobilized a huge number of officers to block off streets around Shibuya to protect the crowds from harm and help keep order. They’re going to have a big job this year, as the crowds are expected to be larger and rowdier than ever. (While I was there on Sunday a male cosplayer got arrested for going without a costume entirely, e.g. nude.) We’ll be covering the costumes on social media, so follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram if you don’t already!
In addition to our almost-finished Halloween Contest, we’ve got more good news: our awesome monster girl game — actually, the game credited with creating the entire genre — is going to start shipping soon! We’ll be processing preorders for Princess X: My Fiance is a Monster Girl?! on Halloween, a fitting day indeed, though this means you have only two days to order the game to get the preorder bonuses. So stop what you’re doing and make the order now!
