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Last weekend I celebrated Halloween. Well, sort of. In the past few weeks I've picked up some Halloween stuff from 100 yen stores, including the stuff in the picture above which came from Daiso.


Halloween is two words? I was hoping to find something with "Merry Halloween" written on it, but no luck (I saw a few things that said that last time in Japan).  


I don't think I've ever seen so many warnings for just stickers. They really don't want you to lick them or put them on your skin... are they poisonous? 


I also got this stuff at Daiso on a different day. I got a bunch of random candy (it was 3 or 4 for 100 yen).


This axe was a totally random purchase, but it's so funny. I don't think I've ever seen such a happy, girly, sparkly, fuzzy, ridiculous axe.


I bought some imported Halloween themed Haribo gummies at Minipla at LaLaport. The bag was Halloween themed. I don't like Charlie Brown a whole lot, but I appreciated the Halloween theme.



I bought these snacks at the grocery store. The chips are pumpkin gratin flavored and the things on the left are little chocolate and strawberry filled cookies. The cookies are good and I haven't tried the chips yet. Maybe I'll eat them tomorrow, which is actually Halloween.


The lollipops I bought at Daiso were super cute! I gave the cream soda (melon soda with vanilla ice cream) flavored one to Jonathan (I put together treat bags for us, haha) and I kept the milk flavored one. Yes, milk flavored. I bought it because of the adorable packaging, but I ended up liking the flavor too. It just had a sweet creamy flavor, but it was tasty. Oh, and the lollipops are Mickey shaped! I will have to try some of the other flavors.


The cookies had such cute packaging! Disney seemed to be a popular thing for Halloween.


That's the stuff I put in the treat bags. Yum!


I bought that cute lantern at Seria, but all the rest of my decorations were from Daiso. 

Every Friday Jonathan and I eat junk food and watch Psych. It's our weekly tradition. It really wasn't any different this time except for the decorations and my "costume."


I forced Jonathan to put on this headband and hold this stuff. See how he felt about that?


Yeah, so there's my costume. It's probably the best Halloween costume I've ever put together! Way better than the one I made last year, right?


Okay, maybe not. But it was way less time consuming and was much less expensive than my Princess Peach costume. Though I loved working on that dress. I missed that this year. I love costumes and making stuff, so I love Halloween. It's my second favorite holiday, after Christmas.





We had KFC to eat. I wasn't even sure what this was when I ordered it, but it looked interesting. It was really delicious! Despite not being boneless and being dark meat, it was still really good. It was sweet and yummy. I still don't know what the flavor was though, haha.


The next day we got lunch at 7-Eleven before doing some shopping. I don't like milk tea (I like putting milk in some tea, but I don't like the bottled kind), but the packaging was so cute! :) I love how popular Marie from the Aristocats is here. 


I bought this pumpkin pudding candy and was surprised by a gummy center when I bit in (I thought it was just pumpkin flavored white chocolate) haha. It also had the sauce stuff that's on Japanese pudding (which is like flan). It wasn't bad, but it was a bit surprising, lol.

We ate our lunch at the park near the river. There weren't many people at the park because it had rained a lot the night before and the ground was still pretty wet. I took the opportunity to ride the nasu! Japanese eggplant! So exciting! Haha!


I wanted to take a picture of Jonathan on the nasu but he got scared and got off before I could take a picture. He claims that he was afraid that he would break it. Yeah, right. He just couldn't handle the intense excitement of the thrilling eggplant!


We walked along the river for a few minutes and saw these really really bright berries. They were brighter in real life. They were really pretty! 

Then we headed to Seiyu which is owned by Walmart. I took a picture of some beautiful graffiti in the cosmetics section.


The puzzle selection is definitely better than in the US!



Want to eat some aloe vera? Haha.

I bought some pineapple banana jelly, curry, and hangers. We went to a different Seiyu the previous week (a smaller one that mostly just had groceries) and bought Great Value parmesan cheese, cranberry juice, and honey roasted peanuts. It wasn't cheap. Imported Great Value food... haha.

Overall, Seiyu did have some good stuff, but the store was kind of depressing in a K-Mart sort of way. There weren't very many people there especially considering that it was a weekend. Though I will probably go back when I run out of parmesan cheese because it was a good deal.

Oh and they sold Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but only the white chocolate kind. WHY????? It was like they were teasing me. So cruel! I like white chocolate, but it just doesn't go with peanut butter like regular chocolate does.

Then we went to Nandemo Kaimasu, a used store near Jonathan's apartment. I found a really cute Rilakkuma stuffed animal for only 400 yen! They had a really huge one holding a donut that said "Mister Donut" and it was amazing, but it was 15000 yen. I'll just get stick with the 400 yen one...


I added the axe to make this post more Halloweeny since I have kind of gotten away from that theme in the second half of this post.

That evening Jonathan and I walked to an area where he sometimes runs and has seen many stray cats. An old couple goes there every evening too and feeds them. The cats were a bit shy with us (one was super friendly though!) but we saw some of them run up to the woman. They definitely recognized her! It was really cute!

I only had my phone so this picture isn't very good, but it kind of shows one of the cats. We saw at least four black cats. So that was kind of Halloweenish. So cute, too!


Then we made taco salad for dinner. Yum! The grocery store near Jonathan's apartment doesn't have plain tortilla chips so we used some chips called Don Tacos which are basically Doritos. The flavor we got tasted a bit like Sweet Chili Doritos, which are my favorite Doritos.Yum!


The next day the weather was super super nice. It was so sunny but not hot. I took advantage of the nice weather and did some laundry. The weather was so nice that I even enjoyed doing my laundry. Weird, but I really did. Plus, "traditional laundry in Japan are so soft as to calm down our minds." Ummmm, ok.



I went running that afternoon and ran 7 kilometers. I had run 7 kilometers on Wednesday, too (first time I had ever run that far). I felt like I could run for a while longer but it was getting dark. When I signed up for the 10k I wasn't planning on running the whole thing, but I think I'll be able to! It's less than a month away now!

On October 12th Jonathan and I were invited to a small neighborhood festival in Iwata. Some neighborhoods in Iwata had their festivals the weekend before (the same weekend I went to the Backstreet Boys concert) and I had wondered what they were about.  

It was a nice day, so Jonathan and I biked from his apartment to the festival. It took about an hour and a half.


After eating a big, delicious lunch we stopped by the neighborhood shrine and headed out to help pull a float. I learned that the festival is for giving thanks for the harvest and other things.


The float is pulled through the neighborhood and has to pass by every house. The people on the float play music. At one point the music stopped and we were told it was because someone had died in the past year. The people in that family can't participate in the festival that year. 


The previous weekend I had seen many floats being pulled around my apartment and didn't really understand the point. It seemed a bit boring to just pull around a float all day. Well, we pulled it around a little bit, then stopped to eat, pulled it around a big more, ate some more, and so on. There was so much food! The first time we stopped I had a popsicle. The second time I was handed something that I had no clue what it was, but it ended up being fried quail eggs on a stick which were delicious!


At one point we stopped at a nursing home and many of the residents took pictures by the float. At this point I ate a mikan, which I've been told is a tangerine or a mandarin orange or something, I don't know the difference. I hate eating oranges, but I like mikan. 


This little cart with food and drinks was pulled behind the bigger float. 

Then we headed back to the shrine where there was even more food! Despite being pretty full already, people kept offering food to Jonathan and I. I had kakigori (shaved ice with flavored syrup and condensed milk), yakitori (chicken on a stick), edamame, and a couple other things I'm probably not remembering right now.


I was really full, but then someone brought out a melon cut in half and gave Jonathan and I each a half. It was grown by one of the men there at the festival. He has several greenhouses and they're really fancy and controlled by computers so that they grow in perfect conditions. We were told that the melons sell in Tokyo for 8,000 yen! That's about 80 dollars!

So despite being full, I couldn't refuse such a special gift. Luckily melon is not very filling and I had no trouble eating it. I'm not a huge melon fan, but I enjoy it every once in a while and it was a good melon. Though I can't imagine paying 8000 yen for one!

Also, we had some pickled baby melons. Three melons grow on each plant but only one can be allowed to grow to full size so the tiny ones are pickled. They were really delicious! I would never guess that they were baby melons.


Once it was dark we headed out again to pull the float to another location. Five or Six neighborhoods pulled their floats all to one location. Once we got there, some speeches were given (that most people didn't really pay attention to). Even Jonathan and I were asked to say something on stage, hahaha. I just said that I had had fun at the festival and thank you. Then of course we ate some more. I had an onigiri (rice ball) and some pear. 


The float looked really neat with the lanterns lit up at night! 

It had been a really fun day and I was already a bit tired, but Jonathan and I had to bike back to his apartment. It was really windy and we took a different way (because going through the dark woods at night would be scary!) than we had come that morning so it took us about two hours. It was sooooo windy! At some points we just had to walk our bicycles. With all that biking and walking and pulling I was pretty sore the next day! But it was worth it!


This picture is from a house near by apartment the previous weekend. Many houses around Iwata and Hamamatsu had these pink flowers and I wondered what their purpose was. I learned that they symbolize happiness and they're made by handicapped people and sold to people participating in the festival. They're really cute! :)

I didn't want to carry my camera around during the festival, so I only had my cell phone. I took a video and I'm not sure how to transfer it to my computer, plus I'm sure it's horrible anyways since I took it at night. I took some videos of the floats around my apartment the previous weekend so here's a video of those:

This past weekend I went to a Backstreet Boys concert in Hamamatsu! I bought the tickets back in early July and knew about it for a while before then so I had been looking forward to it for a long time!

Earlier this year one of my roommates from college posted about going to a Backstreet Boys concert in her city in the US. I knew that when BSB toured they usually went to Japan so I checked online for tour dates. I got really excited when I saw one in Nagoya, a city less than two hours away from Iwata (an hour with shinkansen). It was on a weeknight, but it would work out. I figured that had to be the closest one but then I scrolled down and saw one in Shizuoka. Only about an hour away! Then I saw the details of that concert and saw that it was actually in Hamamatsu! It was Shizuoka prefecture, not Shizuoka city! I looked up where the concert would be held and saw that it was really close to my boyfriend's apartment! It just kept getting better and better! :)

I was super excited! I loved the Backstreet Boys when they were really popular but I never went to a concert. This was a really great chance to finally see them. All five members are back together and it's their 20th anniversary year. Despite their cheesiness, I still think they're great! I was so excited about the concert that even when I found out that tickets were 9,500 yen (almost $100!) I still HAD to go.

The concert was held at 5:00 on Saturday in Hamamatsu Arena. As we set out on our bikes Jonathan said, "Let's take the back streets." He didn't even mean to make a joke, but I was amused.

It was less than a half hour bike ride to the arena and Jonathan and I arrived a little after 4:00 when they had started letting people in.


Jonathan was also attending the concert (I paid for half of his ticket because I didn't want to go by myself) and we wondered how many guys would be there. It turned out there were quite a few guys. It looked like many other girls had also made their boyfriends and husbands go with them. I didn't see any younger people there and I was a bit surprised by that. I thought that some of the women would drag along their kids or something. But it turns out that all the Japanese concerts were only 18+. I have no idea why. The US concerts don't have any age restriction.

Seating was assigned so there wasn't a rush to get in so we took our time and I looked at the merchandise for sale. I had seen several people with towel scarf things and I bought one, too. I wanted a t-shirt with all the Japanese tour dates and cities on the back, but the t-shirts were 4,000 yen so I passed up on that. The towel was 1,500.

We then waited in a line for a few minutes which ended up being the wrong line, but there was plenty of time so it didn't matter. When we were let into the arena we were given fliers with all the tour dates on it. It's an awesome souvenir! I always love seeing American things with Japanese writing so this is just perfect.


Jonathan was so excited for the concert! Hahaha.


The arena was small so there weren't any bad seats. Actually, I think our seats were better than some of the more expensive ones. The ones in the lower area were more expensive, but the seating was flat so it may have been a bit harder to see. 

The concert was really good! They had a lot of energy and their voices were great live. They mostly did older songs and did a few songs from their new album. I enjoyed all of them. It was so much fun! I was really amused every time they spoke Japanese. They didn't speak much, mostly just greetings and "arigato" and counting, but the audience loved it. I was excited when they would yell "Hamamatsu!" Between some songs each member had a chance to speak. They spoke English so most people didn't understand too much. Brian had the best idea. He didn't say anything and just held up a bunch of cards with Japanese on them. It was cute. Haha.

At one point, I forget which song it was, they told us to get out our cell phones and use the lights on them. It took a while for people to understand that haha. Anyways... photography wasn't allowed, but I took the opportunity to sneakily take a picture. It didn't turn out well, but at least I have something. Other people had the same idea, but I saw one girl near us get caught.


I found a video from the concert on Youtube though! It's from when they did I Want it That Way. That was one of my favorite songs of the evening. It was a lot of fun because the crowd was really into it and knew the words and stuff.

I have no idea how someone was able to take video without getting caught and I hope it doesn't get taken off Youtube. Anyways... here's the video:



Here's another video that's not very good quality, but oh well!



It wasn't completely crazy like videos I've seen from their concerts back when they were really big, plus I've heard Japanese concerts are calmer, and the US ones probably are now too, but there were still plenty of people really into it. There was a girl near us who knew all the words to every song and even a lot of the dance moves. The girl in front of us had a sign for Kevin, but was told she couldn't have that. There was an older woman sitting next to me who was by herself. Before the concert started I saw her wave to someone down below so I guess she was with someone with a more expensive seat. So I thought she might just be with them and not really into the Backstreet Boys because she seemed a bit old. But she was just as into it as everyone else.

The concert lasted about an hour and a half so it ended around 6:30 or a little after that. I would have liked to get a better picture with this sign, but there were so many people trying to do the same thing. Here I am pointing to Hamamatsu! Sold out! 


I'm really glad that they came to Hamamatsu. It's really kind of random because it's not nearly as big as the other cities in their Japan tour. It was their first time performing in Hamamtsu so it's the perfect time for me to be living here!


They didn't do this song at the concert, but here's a video that BSB made in Japan. Maid cafes, karaoke, arcades... yay. :) It's making me excited to go to Tokyo next month for a three day weekend!

I took a video of my apartment back in August (between climbing Mt. Fuji and going on my Osaka/Hiroshima trip) but hadn't gotten around to uploading it to YouTube. I finally did that today so here's the video:



Overall I really like my apartment. I would like to have a bigger kitchen but I still prefer this kitchen to the one I had in Toi. That one had stained walls and was just really old. Oh yeah, and cockroaches every once in a while. I haven't seen one yet here... I hope it continues that way!