15 Day SPooOOooOky Halloween Trip Report with Photos

Hello! My wife and I went to our first trip to Japan mid Oct for our anniversary. Special thanks to all the feedback and info from this reddit because it went great! The best vacation of our lives, hands down. If you want you can read our original feedback thread we posted [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/15of2cc/15_day_trip_tokyokyotoosaka_with_an_eye_for/).

For the trip report, I am going to try and focus on the Halloween/horror activates since I can only imagine post 10000 about how UNESCO world heritage sites are worth the 20 min trade/taxi ride seems a tad redundant, though yes, they are mind-blowing, visit them.

**Halloween Overview**: We love Halloween and horror, and have been to various places, haunts and events around the US so we were excited for Halloween to be a major part of our first big international trip. I should note that we are more into traditional classic Halloween, horror and folklore and not the party/drinking aspect so we did not go Halloween week, We made sure to be back home, so we could decorate the house and give out candy!

We were mildly afraid that the holiday would not be quite as big oversees as it is back home, a fear that was wholly unfounded. Almost every store had unique Halloween offerings and decorations, every restaurant had a Halloween menu with fall flavors, entire department stores were DECKED out in festive orange and black. I was in the….spirit…of the season the entire time!

Here is my

——————–

#**Other overall notes**

**Dates**: We went early October and crowds/weather were basically perfect (with the notable exception of the theme parks, which I will detail in a bit). Almost every day was a high of 70, sunny and low humidity. Since we visited a few weeks before full fall colors, combined with getting up around 6 AM each day, many of the places we had to ourselves. We visited three Pokémon centers and two Nintendo stores none of which had a wait to get in or checkout. I 100% would travel this time of year again with no hesitation.

**Logistics**: As others have said, ship your luggage, it is worth the cost and easy to do. Also don’t dismiss taxies, sure it’s more expensive but considering the time and effort to get to Japan, a few bucks to save time or have peace of mind were well spent IMO. Give yourself time in the schedule to wonder, the country is chalk full of just, interesting stores or spaces to explore. As we left, we both firmly agreed we easily could have stayed two more weeks without getting bored, just in the Tokyo/Kyoto areas alone.

**Food/Drink**: The food was consistently good is Japan. It’s almost surreal how I can eat basically anything there, from anywhere, and It tasted really good, some of it the best I ever had. In addition, I loved how dessert was not overly sweat, it was nice to eat sweets while on vacation without getting tired of all the sugar. I will say along with the consistency of quality there was a uniformity to flavor that surprised me and got a smidge boring here and there. The cocktail scene is basically nonexistent, mostly highballs, sake bar was super fun though. Special shoutout to the hokkaido melon, muscat grapes and Starbucks Boo frappe for being particularly amazing!

———————

#**Halloween Events**

**Disney Halloween 9/10**: The truth is I could write an entire post about Disney, and I might later in a relevant sub. Halloween wise, it’s not quite the same level as Orlando or CA decoration/show wise, but it is a lot of fun and tons of guests were dressed up, including ourselves 😊. I have lots of great photos of us interacting with various guests and cast all in costume. DisneySea is overall the best theme park I have ever visited; however, all the theme parks were slam packed with people. Recommend showing up an hour before they open for the best experience. I recommend 3-4 days to explore both parks in full.

**Universal Halloween 7/10**: I have a full review of Universal HHN party [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/HHN/comments/17gc8ei/2023_osaka_japan_house_ranking_final_thoughts/k6fmxrg/). It was good but insanely crowded.

**Kinkab Ramen 10/10**: Not only was it spooky, it was my favorite meal of the trip, the atmosphere, the décor, the hyper tender and delicious chashu and of course [the spice](https://i.imgur.com/QWCBqk9.jpg). Worth the wait.

**Vampire Café N/A**: We were too tired to visit that day and decided to cut it.

**Daiba Mysterious School 10/10**: Raw, dark experience that felt like it was being run in a creepy guys garage but in the best way. Really quite frightening and you are just thrust into a pitch black maze with just a flashlight, good luck! Lots of cool stuff in the area as well so well worth a visit.

**Minatoya Yurei Kosodateame Honpo 5/10**: It’s just a candy shop, nothing special but its right…dead… center near Sannen-zaka so if you are in the area might as well visit.

**Rokudō Chinnō-ji Temple 7/10**: Decently interesting temple in its own right, the fact they make you peer at the “well to hell” across a courtyard [from behind a small hole in the fence](https://i.imgur.com/3QbL2sP.jpg) makes it quite a bit spookier and foreboding. Again, it’s right near Sannen-zaka so worth a visit.

**Tyffonium 9/10**: A VR horror experience in Diver city, not far from Daiba Mysterious School and the Gundam store this spot is well worth spending time at. The experience its self was quite scary, and the VR was extremely well done with physical effects that add massively to the experience. We loved it so much we wanted to do another round but had to head out, we will go back!

**ONRYOU ZASHIK 7/10**: A very traditional haunted house in Tokyo Dome City, it has the distinction of being pure Japanese horror. It was a tad less scary since the narrative was all in Japanese so I was confused, and the attraction itself was a bit weathered. Tokyo Dome City has some cool stuff if you like theme park attractions, but also skippable if you are short on time.

**Yoki Street/Parade 11/10**: So, the parade was actually moved for safety concerns so we did not get to experience the parade. What we did get to do, which in it’s own way was better, was meet and talk with [Junya Kono](https://folkartmarket.org/2023-ifam-artists/3tyldn9hdcxypgw-scfd9-zf5tf-tdzbk), folk artist and the organizer of the parade. He was so happy to talk to us about Japanese folk horror, he even invited us up to his workshop to show off the masks, let us take a few photos with us wearing them, and discuss the process of making them. He gifted us a signed copy of his art book, one of our most treasured souvenirs. My wife, who is a huge fan of folk art and folk horror, was just nerding out the whole time talking to him excitedly through google translate and we ended up chatting for about an hour. As we were leaving, she turned to me and said excitedly “there are people who would have based their masters thesis on what we just did!” Possibly the single best experience of the trip, Mr. Kono really was a delight to talk to, and we hope we can visit him again, if not see his art on display one day.

Ok, that covers all the Halloween activities we did, if you have any questions let me know!