Halloween in Japan

I always thought Halloween was dreamed up by the candy manufacturers collaborating with the American Dental Association (just kidding, I love going to the dentist). But I was wrong, of course.

(Although considering Americans spend $11 billion on the event — $700 million on pet costumes alone! — the incentive is there.)

However, Halloween actually goes back 2,000 years (before the invention of candy), dreamed up by the Celts to mark the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. They wore masks and lit bonfires to ward off ghosts and called it Samhain, which isn't a very marketable name. So eventually, some marketing wiz changed the name to, yeah, Halloween. Catchy.

At some point, Americans began dressing up in costumes and going door to door asking for food or money, which eventually became trick-or-treating.

Over the years, there were lots of tales about Halloween and women meeting their future husbands (for some reason). One myth was that if a young woman ate a sweet mixture of walnuts, hazelnuts, and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night, she would dream of her future husband. If I ate that, I would dream about a fistful of Tums.

My friends and I, in our pre-juvenile delinquent days, had our own routines. We would steal those painstakingly carved pumpkins from neighbors' front steps, take them up the five-story fire escape of our local school, and drop them, thrilling at the explosive splatter when they hit the pavement.

To this day, I still feel guilty about the heartbreak we caused. Johnny, leaving for school in the morning, would find his cherished pumpkin gone. "Dad," he wailed, "it's gone!" as if it were a beloved pet.

It always amazes me when I travel around in October how Halloween pervades every country. The candy displays and plastic pumpkins burst into retail, and the Muzak turns to those gimmicky songs ("The Monster Mash") that you hoped you'd never hear again.

So it didn't surprise me last October when I was in Japan to see Halloween everywhere. And as expected, the Japanese did an amazing job of raising it to the next level.

I was wandering the streets of Hiroshima when I stumbled upon a parade of people dressed to the nines in elaborate costumes (just another day in cosplay, I thought). Of course, I followed them.

And they set up in a square in front of a DJ (on fake grass for some reason) and danced! It was great. These were not grown-ups but kids of all ages, all perfectly choreographed.

Seriously, these weren't kids wearing sheets with holes cut for their eyes or riding brooms. The costumes were elaborate enough for a Broadway musical, and the kids were synchronized like dancers in a Beyoncé concert.

You know, this is the thing I like the most about travel. You're walking down the street, and something amazing happens. Not planned, not in the guidebooks, not an Insta recommendation — just a happening out of nowhere.