As the time approached, I kind of felt like I was meeting people in my college dorm for the first time. It was a strange phenomenon. Anyway, we ended up meeting some folks, including our upstairs neighbors. This family has three boys (teenagers) and has lived in Tokyo for 13 years. They probably were thinking, "look at these newbies, what have they gotten into?!!" They were really nice, thankfully, and offered any assistance we needed.
OK, so on to the trick-or-treating.... Joseph wouldn't have any part of his Halloween costume. We put on his monkey pants, and then when the "coat" was ready, he promptly freaked out. I tried to bribe him anyway I could, but I just gave up. We then met the families who were giving out candy, and that is when the chaos started.
To give some background, it is next to impossible to find bags of candy in Tokyo. We ended up going to this store called "Don Quijote" (yes, spelling is different) to find some bags of snickers. We bought three bags (each containing about 14 little bars) for about $10. So that would be our small donation to the community pot. Once we saw the stash our neighbors had, we knew we had grossly underestimated the amount of candy that we needed.
You see, most of these families brought back Costco-sized bags of candy from back home (after their summer stays). I kid you not, these families had at least 1500 (yes, FIFTEEN HUNDRED) pieces of candy. And many of the families say they usually run out of candy. I know Tokyo is heavily populated area, but where do all these kids come from?
Maybe all the Japanese kids knew that the gaijin neighborhoods provide the good stuff!
If you notice above, we spent a lot of money on a small amount of candy. The sticker shock here is really unbelievable. I kind of get sick to my stomach shopping for groceries, but I have to realize that we all need to eat, too. If we stick to the local Japanese grocery stores (where I don't know what I'm buying), prices are cheaper. The international grocery stores are just crazy. For example, we saw a large-sized Gain laundry detergent. Converting to dollars, it was about $40. Again, do I want clean clothes or not?
Oh, one more thing about Halloween. So on Sunday morning, Christian had to catch an early flight to Nagasaki for a day trip. Joseph and I went for a walk at 7. We were the only ones around, with the notable exception of Halloween party-goers coming home. You don't see this stuff in the suburbs of Milwaukee.
