One of the more obvious things you'll learn about me is my absolute obsession with all things pumpkin. In America, I am quite limited to essentially October and November. Which can lead me to getting quite carried away while I have the chance.
Lucky for ME Japan has pumpkin all year round. Also Japanese pumpkin is delicious! To top that off, Japan has a pretty fantastic Halloween season. It's still a pretty new holiday and it's totally unheard of to see little kids going door to door. But Halloween decorations appeared in stores half way through September. So that's not too far off from American stores. Plus, a lot of people love the excuse to dress up in weird costumes. So it ends up being more a thing adults do for fun. Or often you'll see Halloween events at schools as sort of a Western cultural lesson.
Well anyway, as I'm basking in the glow of pumpkins and ghosts, I want to share with you a little of Japan's Halloween flavor. Now, as you may recall, I live in a very rural town in Kyushu, so it just goes to show you that the commercialization of holidays knows no boundaries.
So here I have for you pictures of all the Halloween products I found in just ONE TRIP to the grocery store. Some of the food products have special Halloween flavors, but you'll see a lot of them are just Halloween packaging with no change to the flavor. You'll also notice that Japan doesn't do pumpkin spice flavor, as they don't really have pumpkin pie and pumpkin spice. Everything is just actual pumpkin flavor.... which... is pretty gosh darn awesome. I mean I like pumpkin spice too, but to put ACTUAL pumpkin in the food? Revolutionary.
Lucky for ME Japan has pumpkin all year round. Also Japanese pumpkin is delicious! To top that off, Japan has a pretty fantastic Halloween season. It's still a pretty new holiday and it's totally unheard of to see little kids going door to door. But Halloween decorations appeared in stores half way through September. So that's not too far off from American stores. Plus, a lot of people love the excuse to dress up in weird costumes. So it ends up being more a thing adults do for fun. Or often you'll see Halloween events at schools as sort of a Western cultural lesson.
Well anyway, as I'm basking in the glow of pumpkins and ghosts, I want to share with you a little of Japan's Halloween flavor. Now, as you may recall, I live in a very rural town in Kyushu, so it just goes to show you that the commercialization of holidays knows no boundaries.
So here I have for you pictures of all the Halloween products I found in just ONE TRIP to the grocery store. Some of the food products have special Halloween flavors, but you'll see a lot of them are just Halloween packaging with no change to the flavor. You'll also notice that Japan doesn't do pumpkin spice flavor, as they don't really have pumpkin pie and pumpkin spice. Everything is just actual pumpkin flavor.... which... is pretty gosh darn awesome. I mean I like pumpkin spice too, but to put ACTUAL pumpkin in the food? Revolutionary.
And then some...
Here are some other pictures of Halloween stuff I've seen in Japan (this will be updated continuously throughout the month).
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