Japanese Cultural Exchange
31/10/2005
Last night I dutifully aquiessed to the role of cultural ambassador. I don't know whether it's still custom in London suburbs or if it's perhaps thrawted as the parents are afraid that their kids will be gunned down - but you may have noticed it was Halloween last night. And so at about 9pm I received a phone call from a Japanese aquaintence of mine going by the name Mituse. She expressed a desire to experience 'Traditional British Halloween'. I asked if she in fact meant she want to go and do 'Trick or Treat', and she replied that this was indeed the case. I told her that she would need a costume and without hesitation she replied that this was no problem and could I come over to her apartment.
I soon found myself hurriedly cycling over to Mitsue's place of residence, fully aware of the following facts:
1) It was fast approaching 10pm - a time after which I imagined many people would be considering retiring from the day to slumber,
2) Mitsue and I were probably 2-3 times older than the next youngest trick or treater
3) I was not dressed in particularly fancy nor scary attire, unless Berghaus Goretex jackets give you the willies.
And so, it was with the odds stacked against the successful realisation of my Japanese friend's cultural experience that I arrived at her door.
She greeted me dressed in a traditional Japanese Kimono, although she assured me in wasn't the full formal outfit, merely a slightly more casual variant of the tea ceremony attire. Far from scared by her outfit, I found myself mildly enamored by her appearance. However I had confidence that this would fit in as I'd seen a few 'Nurses' on the way with awfully short skirts and blood stains, that in fact did little to scare me and absolute nil to abait my interest in their legs.
She invited me.
I quickly drew her attention to the three aforementioned problems, however her fervor to experience 'Traditional British Halloween' remained turgid and unwavering. Realising that as British citizen, and therefore an ambassador representing our heritage and customs, I had the responsibility to oblige her and dress like a twat whilst calling on unsuspecting houses several hours after all the other trick or treating kids would have been packed off to bed.
And So ensued a flustered hurry to find some kind of 'scary' outfit for myself. After some minutes of rifling through Mistue's wardrobe I emerged with a few garments that looked least important or likely to be ruined by my attempts to squeeze them over my somewhat family size sized frame when compared with her Japanese petite size 3.5 body.
I looked in the mirror - a Thai wrap around skirt and some pretty black blouse, that despite my 4 day stubble somehow projected an air of femmininty. Perfect, that would scare any dissidents into trick or treat obliging submission.
Next I botched some mascarer onto my face, generally missing my eyelashes, but what the hell, a bit of blue eyeshadow, eyebrow pencil as eyeliner and some hair clips in my somewhat receding hair to top it all off.
After a few titters from her flat mates, we emerged into the Autumnal Halloween night and set off for suburbia. It was a 5 mintute walk to the nearest suitable housing area and on the way I was releived to see we weren't the only ones in Halloween attire. I realised Mituse hadn't grasped that the dress code was leaning towards scary, I attempted to explain this, but quickly realised I had little background information as to what Halloween was in aid of, aside from American kids goign round and generally pissing off the neighbourhood. I'm sure, like pizza, 'fries' and enumarable facets of their culture, Halloween has it's origins in Europe, but has been bought out and rebranded by the Americans. And so I resolved that at a later stage, I would explain the significance of Halloween to Mitsue, with the assistance of google of course,
Like the brave and valiant paladin I know myself to be, I announced that Mitsue would have to ring the doorbells herself and say trick or treat, that way if it got nasty I could blame it all on her and she would get bashed instead of me. Fortunately she obviously saw the merit in this arrangement and enthusiastically began to ring doorbells.
She choose a house with a pumpkin glaring out of the window. After bracing myself for attack a somewhat friendly and amused gentlemen opened the door. He pointed out that we weren't children, but I was quick to delineate that this was an important mission of cultural exchange. We were soon rewarded with some sweets. After such a good start, we continued with some enthusiasm and were also awarded further gifts - 2 asda's own economy chocolate chip cookies, a tin of rice pudding and a plastic eyeball.
So after a short but sweet campaign noticing that most peoples windows were dark and the pubs had shut some time ago, we retired with, I felt, some degree of success.
