👀 Who needs ghosts when you have Minor Inconveniences?
#358 | In Japan, an alternative (but not low-effort) Halloween
Halloween is my favourite time of the year.
Well, that's a lie. It's not. Okay, it is - but not for the reason you'd think. I give no fucks about Halloween itself. But what I do look forward to every year is scrolling through photos of costumes at Mundane Halloween in Japan (or Jimi Halloween, as it's called there).
Concept? Simple. It's a costume contest where you dress up as something extremely mundane or ordinary. Why? The folks at Daily Portal Z, who've been running and sponsoring the event since 2014, “kind of wanted to participate in the festivities of Halloween but were too embarrassed to go all out in witch or zombie costumes.”
Results? Fantastic. Every year the costumes get more and more creative - yet they're absolutely pedestrian and not what you'd associate with Halloween at all. And every year I scour the internet for a full gallery so I can spend my afternoon cackling in delight.
Don't believe me? Here are a couple of my favourites from this year:
And, of course, my all-time legendary favourite.
If you don't read Japanese (I don't), and if you don't have the patience to go hunting all over the internet for these every year (I do), Japan culture website Spoon & Tamago has been covering the event since 2018, so you can leisurely scroll through their archives here as you come up with an idea for your 2024 Halloween costume, mundane or otherwise.