Samhain Anyone?

After lazing around for most of the day, I finally decided to motivate myself to prepare for that night's party. Then I remembered I had a medical checkup and chucked all the preps and got probed instead (Clean bill of health. Whew, now I can drink guilt-free.) And it started raining so hard that I had to walk to my festivities in a downpour. Ah well. Party one was at a friend's school and much to my disappointment barely a half dozen people even bothered to wear a costume. I even had to lend out a couple of my spare masks.

 I snapped a few pics of the few other costumed attendees. 

This guy was great!

 

 

That was it. I left the shindig and head over to my own shindig. I saw this outside a Pachinko on the way.

 

The party started slow, but improved as the night went on. It's a very tiny venue and at one point about 15 people were milling about. (Capacity is maybe 12?). Alex's shout out on Redditt received many responses and about 40 people replied, saying they were deterred due to the rain. (TODAY of course is a lovely day!) We also had an International mix, a German guy, a Belgian (?) and a French gal were the first to arrive and they departed once it started getting crowded. (Like the Reddittors were told to do, so we'd be able to have a steady supply of people without crashing through the floor en masse.) Later, We had a Dane, an Irishman and a Swede(?) plus a mix of Americans and Japanese and the two Canadians, Alex and myself. 

A former student of Alex's and her beau. 

 Fortunately, three people from the previous showed up to make it interesting.

 

And a couple of poker buddies rounded off the crowd.

Because I was in such a rush after my hospital checkup, I just hurriedly grabbed my Dino costume.

I provided some presents to the best costumers who were crowned at Midnight with Ghostbusters playing in the background.

An Alien for the dude who handmade his own leather gimp mask. 

 

And a Gizmo for the only gal still in the bar. (Her odds were pretty good of winning, only three gals showed up all night.)

Alex, was gussied up in a shirt so Halloweeny it lit up the room (or maybe it was the lighting effects).

And two of my favourite records.

 

I scammed a few photos that the bar owner/tender took that show off the decorations.

All in all, it was a fun night and the bartender said that maybe he'd like a Christmas party now. Due to the rain, I didn't get a chance to snap photos of passersby. Ah well.

Speaking of Gizmo, one or two new Gatcha out there. These have a fuzzy feel to them.

 

I saved my favourite Oni for last, Namahage. I've been to its hometown as seen here, Namahage, or just click on the label. 

 

 

I forgot all about showing my comics, so I think I'll save them for later. For other Halloween treats, be sure to go to the Countdown page and snoop around for more spooky blogs.

 

See ya next year!

I'll probably take a day off and then on November 3rd, I'll start frequent Godzilla posts for Govember 2025! 

Throwback Thursday

A friend showed up last night with his kid and grandkid in tow. We got exceedingly hammered and ate yummy food (not necessarily in that order.) 

We went to a chicken restaurant.

Here are some of the dishes:

Truth be told, I had no idea what half the dishes were. Only that they tasted good. 

Below is 秋刀魚 (sanma) or Pacific Saury about that. Lots of tiny bones and manganese aplenty.  

Oden!

Some breaded chicken fingers.

And does anyone care to hazard a guess as to what this is?*

*Answer at the end of this entry.

Here are the kids in question. I've known the one in the pink shirt (Kai)  since he was around three and he recently became a father.

 

We also sampled about a half dozen glasses of sake (October 1st is World Sake Day, for goodness sake) from all around Miyagi prefecture.

 Next stop was Dragon Diner and we met up with some pals of Stefan left, owner Suu center and me).

 

I convinced him to open up a bottle of Ultraman Sake and/or Shochu, and Kai and I polished have the bottle! (The sake had soured. Don't let it sit on the shelf for six years!)

 

 

Here are a couple of Suu's original pieces of artwork, just to give this post a somewhat Halloween flair.

Even Ratfink got into the spirit by donning some Oni masks. A good time was had by all and I finally got out of bed around 2pm. today.

Speaking of Oni, this red fellow is Shuten Doji, human by day, demon by night and is always indulging in Sake! 

 Here's another pic showing his demise. You can read all about it in this article.

 

Something I had intended on doing and forgot about was the inclusion of a comic cover. I discovered a box deep in my closet full of comics from about 12 years ago. Here's an example.

See what I did there? It's by ONI Press.

The only show I had energy to watch today was the latest episode of Peacemaker. NOT this guy:

 

 

I should get around to reading those, they look cool!

 

NO UFO or Gatcha today, rather here is a wooden post card whose photo I snapped when I went to the Museum last week.

 

That's it for this entry, if I get ambitious, I'll do another entry around midnight to play catch-up. Meanwhile, for a different Halloween blog, go check out Deadpan Flook.

 

 

*Here's the answer to the picture I posted earlier. It is fish sperm. It's an acquired taste.