Last Friday, it was my birthday. I turned 48. I feel so old! So I've been a little bit sad for about a week now. But Halloween is getting closer and closer. That cheers me up!! Halloween is really fun. Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I think Halloween is probably my 2nd favorite. I have many nice memories about this day. Today I will tell you some of the Halloween costumes I wore in the past.
Do you know this robot? His name is C-3P0. He is from the "Star Wars" movies. I love Star Wars, and I've seen almost all of the movies in that series. C-3P0 is a cute robot who appears in each of the main Star Wars films (there are 9 of them). I wore this costume once or twice for Halloween when I lived in Canada.
And this is Harry Potter! When I moved to Nagano in 2004, the Harry Potter books were very popular in Japan. Because I usually wear glasses and I'm a foreigner, sometimes Japanese people would say that I looked like Harry Potter. So of course, I was Harry Potter at my first Halloween party in Nagano. He is a magician who got a red mark on his face (it looks like a little bit like this:🗲) after his enemy tried to kill him. Also, in the Harry Potter books he has green eyes and likes birds. You can see his pet owl in the picture above. Harry is very similar to me, since I have green eyes and like birds too. It was easy to become him for Halloween!!
And everyone has seen this face, I think. It's Pikachu, the most famous Pokemon character. My first Halloween in Japan, I got a Pikachu mask at the 100yen store and I wore it a lot. My favorite birds are cockatiels (オカメインコ). Whenever I write a new blog on the Starry website, I try to put a picture of a cockatiel next to my name at the end of the blog. Cockatiels look like Pikachu because of their colored cheeks, so I've always loved Pikachu. That's why I chose to be Pikachu when I celebrated Halloween here in my new Japanese home the 1st time. Although I enjoy dressing up in different costumes every year in Japan, I often miss Canada. I used to live in Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada. There are many embassies (大使館) of different countries in Ottawa. On Halloween, you can do "trick-or-treat" at the embassies. The people in those embassies will give out Halloween sweets from their country! Maybe the Switzerland embassy gives our Swiss chocolate, the embassy from Turkey gives out "Turkish delight" candy, and so on. Here is the Japanese embassy in Ottawa, Canada:
You can see the flag of Japan on the right side of the photo. I haven't lived in Ottawa for many, many years. I forget what sweets the Japanese embassy gave out, when Ottawa was my home. Maybe umeboshi candy??
- Peter 
