How Halloween SHOULD be celebrated!

I have never celebrated Halloween as elaborately as I have in Japan this year...

and I love it!

Halloween used to not be all that popular over here. That's what my Japanese friends all tell me anyways. It's only gotten popular in the last few years according to them. But if there is something I know about Japan, it is that they love to play dress up! So naturally, people go all out on this holiday.

In the weeks leading up to Halloween, there were many events all over the city (like in night clubs and bars and so on...) but aside from that, there were also just people dressed up in Halloween costumes everywhere in the streets. And not just on Halloween night; it was pretty much the whole month of October! If I went for dinner in the city for example, I would guaranteed see at least one table of people dressed up as zombies. And it wasn't seen as a weird thing at all. It was lovely.

What I really want to talk about though, is the event held at Universal Studios Japan. From the beginning of October until the 9th of November, USJ holds a little thing called Horror Nights. I've talked about this before briefly in a previous post, but since then, I've gone two more times (yes I know I may have an addiction don't judge me!) and I can now fully explain what it's like.

Horror Nights at USJ are not the same as the Halloween events at, for instance, Disneyland. Disney does cute Halloween and there is nothing cute about USJ Horror Nights.


The park is normal all throughout the day but then, from 6 o'clock, everything changes. The music changes to really creepy horror music, they turn off some of the illumination in the park, they make really big and loud, fake explosions happen all over the park, there is fake police/FBI cars and ambulances and people running around with megaphones telling the crowd to 'not panic',... and then there's the zombies. There are zombies everywhere! 

They just walk along the streets, doing their own thing and sometimes they'll come up and scare you. There's different kinds of zombies too. You've got some special zombies that carry chainsaws or huge hammers or wear masks... stuff like that.

  

This guy chained to a wooden construction actually really freaked me out. I made eye contact with him and he wouldn't stop staring at me. I was walking past and he would not stop giving me that look and screaming at me it was so scary! I don't even know how these people stay in character so well because I was screaming like an idiot and he stayed on point during the entire thing!

 

It was raining on the 9th of November so the zombies didn't come out as much, and the ones that did often wore a rain coat, which was kind of adorable

You can even buy special necklaces that flicker in the darkness and if you wear them, it will attract the zombies and they'll come for you specifically. Me and my friend, Jenni, bought a necklace the second time I went and I can proudly say I got eaten by half a dozen of zombies. They just started encircling me and there was nothing I could do, they kept closing in on me so I just dropped to the floor and died. Call me a dork but I thought it was awesome! (the zombies are not allowed to touch you, but the people wearing those necklaces usually just play along with the zombies and pretend to get eaten anyways.) Sometimes you'll see a person actually get handled really roughly by the zombies, ( they get thrown on the ground an whatnot), but I asked the staff and those are all actors, so it's staged. 

If you don't want to get bothered by the zombies, the Snoopy and Harry Potter parts of the themepark are 'safe zones'.

There's various shows to see as well. They have actors come up on little platforms, screaming into megaphones to stay calm and then all of a sudden zombies come up on the platform and brutally murder them, things like that. And there are dance performances by the zombies as well, which is really funny. They do flashmob style dances to a mix of Halloween themed songs, it's really cool!

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Then there's the attractions. Some attractions in the park stay the same during Horror Nights but a lot of them turn into horror versions of their original. For example, the Terminator attraction (which is usually a 4D movie type experience) turns into a version of The Ring. Basically, it's the same attraction but something goes wrong and the creepy girl from the ring is involved and it's really freaking scary!


They have a similar attraction with The Grudge and Chucky but I never got to do any of those.

There is also a walk you can do through a scary old house in which Jason from Friday The 13th shows up, which I thought was great as well.

Oh and on top of that, a huge percentage of people who go to the park during that time dress up as well so it's just like one big Halloween party! 

The first time I just went dressed as a Hogwarts student

The second time I turned it up a notch and went as a zombie-fied Hogwarts student. I used liquid latex for the first time it was so fun!!

and the third time I went as a doll kind of thing, I don't know I wanted to try something new ^^

I'm really impressed with this event (if you haven't noticed haha). I'm very happy I went three times and I'm a little sad it's ended now. But then again, I'm excited to see what kind of things the Christmas holidays will bring to the park!

For now, I'm taking a little break from USJ (and by that I mean a few weeks)

I also filmed a lot of footage during Horror Night and I'll be uploading that stuff this weekend. Because you really need to see this, it's SO GOOD!!

Good night~~ ♥