Happy Halloween 2011!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Halloween one of the funnest holidays of the year, and we’ve been busy at our home. :)

This is a Halloween-themed bento my wife made:

Halloween Bento!

A closeup of the “Jack-o-lantern” made with nori seaweed:

Halloween Bento Closeup

A couple weeks ago we visited Craven Farms and got some pumpkins:

Pumpkins!

Then after carving the pumpkins, we roasted pumpkin seeds thanks to this recipe:

Roasted pumpkin seeds. Yum.

They turned out much better than last year, when I burned them and used butter (not oil). We ate these up very quickly. ;) I remember in college eating too many pumpkins seeds one year, and had very painful…um…”intestinal issues” later. :p I’ve been careful to be more restrained ever since.

Anyhow, we decorated our little cardboard haunted house again this year, though this time we added some of my daughter’s Disney figurines for extra effect:

Happy Halloween from the bad guys!

We play with this figurines all the time. I think my daughter likes all the voices I do for Jafar, Maleficient, Emperor Zurg and so on, so she always wants to play with them. This is their new “base” so they can do bad things against the “good guys”. :)

Lastly, I am enjoying Roger Zelazny’s classic for Halloween: A Night in the Lonesome October. Zelazny’s genius in writing was his ability to take popular themes in American culture (Dracula, Frakenstein, Jack the Ripper, Lovecraft, etc), but retell them in a way that’s hip, fresh and very creative. This book is divided one chapter per “night” in October. I got off to a late start, but I hope to finish by Halloween night. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this last year and finished it in 48 hours! When I get interested in something, I tend to read very fast. I guess I am kind of an intense person sometimes.1

So, nothing Buddhist or Asian in this blog post. I do have a life outside the blog. :D But for readers everywhere, have a happy and spooky Halloween!

P.S. I’ve been playing around with the iPhone app, Instagram, so some of the photos are filtered for fun. I am a bad photographer, but I do enjoy experimenting.

1 My wife would just say I am a huge nerd. :)


2 Comments on “Happy Halloween 2011!”

  1. Halloween in Japan has become increasingly interesting over the years. In 1983 Kiddyland Toy Store (Omotesando) held the first major Japan Halloween celebration. Kiddyland is the Japanese equivalent of FAO Schwartz. Halloween has spread throughout Japan and has been heavily promoted by Disney. Each year there are specialty items at the Disney Store and Disneyland related to Halloween that are only available in Japan. This year with purchases at the Disney Store you could buy at set of Halloween mugs (Mickey and Minnie) on a pumpkin shaped mug. (1,000 yen for the set). I always try to go to the Disney Store early in October before the items sell out. It is lots of fun to look at how the Japanese integrate Halloween into their culture. Now even local sweet shops have Halloween themed sweets!

  2. Doug 陀愚 says:

    Hi Rev Eidson,

    I know exactly what you mean. I can still remember my wife and I taking our 7 month to Tokyo Disney just around Halloween and having a lot of fun. The Halloween cookies were delicious and my little one was dressed up as a pumpkin. All in all I was pretty impressed by the whole thing.


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