Halloween and an Internet Election

How odd. Here I am writing a post that deals with two things:
1. a day when people dress up, wander all over their town chanting strange things and gather with other people for parties to celebrate the day
2. Halloween

Heh. You like how I did that? Well, if not then just don't mention it.
So, I realize this is not in chronological order but I'm going to go ahead and hit up the election first. This is, obviously, the first time I have ever lived in a foreign country during a presidential election. It is also the first time I have actually spent the last few years paying attention to the news instead of just chatting with people whose roommates overheard something on TV the day before. So, here I am actually caring about this a great deal, and I'm on the other side of the world getting all my info from the internet.
Fortunately, today (Wednesday) is Cultural Day (Bunka no Hi) in Japan so it's a national holiday and the schools are closed. While you in America may be staying up late to watch the returns, I'm sitting here 13 hours in the future in the afternoon of the next day listening to them via Internet radio. I also have a couple of websites showing the results as they come in up so in all likelihood I'm getting my info as fast as you. Still seems odd and disconnected.

Oh boy, and they just called Florida for Bush. Wow. I may not be able to eat lunch now. That's great. Hmmm.... How many years can I stay in the JET program? And is 2 PM too early to start drinking?

Okay, enough of that horribly depressing nonsense, let's talk about candy.
So on Halloween I headed down to a small town called Murata where I
REALLY HOPE BUSH DOESN'T WIN!
ahem, went to a party with a bunch of the other JETs from Miyagi. As you can see from the pictures below (Go ahead and scroll down there and look. No, really. I mean now. Take a peek.) I went as Bill S. Preston Esq. from the band Wyld Stallyns! And if you don't know what movie that's from then you're obviously not an Alex Winter fan. And if you can't figure out who he is then you obviously don't know about http://www.imdb.com And if you don't know how to use that, then you obviously don't know what the internet is. And if you don't know what the internet is then, ummm, how exactly are you reading this again?

Oh, all right. I went as Bill from the excellent movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
As for the hat you see below, I did that myself. I mean, I bought the hat and I was a bit miffed that I was never able to find a plain red hat and had to settle for that one. Then I found the design online, printed it out at school, bought some paint markers in Sendai, cut the letters out of the design I printed, used it as a stencil to make the orange outlines (after freehanding the blue spiral in the background) and then went from there. I basically sat in front of my computer for about four hours working on that since each color needed four or five coats and I had to wait for them to dry in between. But I think it turned out rather nicely.

Unfortunately, that movie was apparently only popular in America. So all of the Canadians, Britons, Irish, Australian, and Other JETs at the party thought I was supposed to be a trucker. Especially when I was drinking beer. Disappointing, but I really can't complain. I picked the costume because it would be easy and all I really did was make the hat. I didn't even get the yellow t-shirt to make it accurate. Maybe if I'd had that...

That was on Saturday, Halloween Eve or Halloweeneen. On Sunday, Halloween proper, I went to the ECC Halloween party in my town. ECC is an organization that teaches, trains, and certifies people to be private English teachers from their home and there's one in Semine. She's super nice, and her youngest daughter is actually one of my 2nd grade Junior High students. So, I go over there on Saturday for English conversation with her and two other ECC teachers, as well as a bit of private Japanese instruction and help. Well, most of her students are also students of mine at Junior High and Elementary so she invited me to the party. It was fun. But you know how these things are. It was designed around things like 'learning' and 'English' instead of candy and fear. So, to me it seemed like an odd party. But since the Japanese kids have never been to a regular Halloween party they didn't know and they all had a great time.

I'll post pictures of both parties on my photo site soon.