Totally Tokyo

Tokyo: The Time Warp

Time here in Japan is quite interesting. It seems as if you can do so much in a short amount of time, but when you go to refer back to those moments you realize that they are several weeks old (and you still haven't updated your blog!)

If you ask me my favorite holiday at any point of the year, even on my birthday, I will tell you it is Halloween. I love the feeling of being scared, candy, costumes, hay rides, cider.... but I was afriad that Japan wouldn't be able to offer me any of these things. And, thank God, I was wrong. Halloween has a new level to met next year, and I still can't believe how much fun I had celebrating a western holiday in the east.

It all start with what could have turned out to be an urban legend: The saturday before Halloween, all the Gaijin (foriengers) and interested Japanese observers "secretly board" a specific car at a specific platform at a specific station on the Yamanote Line dressed in costume and throw a party on the train, attempting to make it the entire length of the railway, which is a giant circle hitting most/if not all of the major sections of Tokyo (it is about an 1 1/2 hour circular ride). Of courseour good friends at Wikipedia.org were the ones that informed us of this and the exact time (9:07 PM, Car 10, Headed east, platform 13, Shinjuku station), and soon- with the power of computer and mouth- our entire dorm already had plans to join the scene.

The friday before the train ride, our lovely local bar threw a costume party for us at Sakura House, and it was so great to see all of our friends from the town dressed up!


Saturday night, after meeting one of our new friends, Fumito, at Yoyogi for a free concert, Pasha, John and myself headed to Shinjuku, we were 20 minutes early and were scared when we didn't see many costumes, but we did see plenty of officers, we were expecting them to breakup the party before it started. While getting closer to the time more and more people where coming out of the wood work, soon our dorm was there along with PowerRangers, Mummies, bloody bodies, dogs, cats, and witches, including our Japanese artist friends we met from sake tasting night who were so excited that we introduced them to something new that they didn't know about in Tokyo. Soon we found ourselves at another platform with even more people, and right before we boarded the train about 4 party cars were formed. When the train came everyone on the platforms rushed the cars, and there were plenty of unexpected bystanders. We protected most of them, including an older lady until the next stop came, strangers were handed beers from other Party Car go-ers, including the older lady! After all the bystanders were gone, songs were being sung, every stations name was being chanted, party car hopping started, and it was so packed you could barly move so some people found seats on top of the lugage racks or even swang by using the hand rings! Words, and even pictures, can't do much for this experience. However, if you have the time, google the yamanote party tain to read up on this newly formed tradition (it has been happening since the 90s). I was personaly interviewed by an english speaking Japanese news caster and crew while on the train!

On actual Halloween night it was our friend Sara's 22nd birthday. The plan was to go to a costume party at a club in Roppongi (a night distric in Tokyo in walking distance from school). However, after school Kaebea, Abe, Nick, Laura and Leanne and myself bought candy and gave out treats to little kids that were dressed up and walking the streets with their mom's near school and Roppongi. It was so cute! I think we enjoyed yelling Happy Halloween and trick or treat jsut as much as all the kids! The costume party was also amazing, another one for the books.

So to conclude, I still had my thirlls, i wore a costume, the hay ride was substituted for a subway ride and cider became ashai- true japanese style.

I am also producing a Podcast segment about the Yamanote Halloween Party Train for my Podcasting class, so look of for that on my other production blog!

*Pictures:

Masa our Cheerleading bartender
Me with Suzuki at the Pearling Cafe- I am from the 70's
One of the party cars on the Yamanote Line
Everyone outside of Vanilla for Sara's 22nd on Halloween

posted by Stephy-ru @ Sunday, November 05, 2006