Spooky Halloween Toilet Paper

Let's just say wiping your butt just got a whole lot scarier around here! We've got ghosts, bats, and cats wearing a jester hat or maybe blood is flying out. And of course those creepy Christian crosses! Feeling chills just typing that! Good luck sleeping tonight, active fan base.

Halloween Roundup 2015

May this year's Halloween fireworks light up the sky of your life!

Halloween is growing in popularity every year in Japan. I think a huge part of it is just that stores want to sell crap to people and there aren't many good Japanese holidays to fill the void this time of year. Actually, the department store I went to today had Christmas crap up all over the place already. I even saw some Christmas displays a week ago. Still, it seems people enjoy doing things they imagine should be done on Halloween.

For example, there aren't really many pumpkins here, but there are a lot of mandarin oranges and persimmons,  so it makes sense that stickers are available to make "pumpkins".

More and more people are wearing some form of a costume. In my opinion, most are about as lame as possible. They're often very cheap with little to no thought put into them. Others are ridiculously good. I will give the 2015 Gaybotstume award to none other than Kyary Pamyu Pamyu for her David Bowie costume.

めっちゃ練習したからね😎 RT @iwasiwasi51: きゃりーちゃん！Mステみたよ！デヴィットボウイのポーズしててなんか面白くてきゃりーちゃんらしくてきゃりーちゃんに凄く似合ってたよ🎃@pamyurin pic.twitter.com/l6wCim0LHJ

— きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ (@pamyurin) October 30, 2015

I'm pretty sure that covers all the Halloween news here in Japan. Merry Christmas!

Halloween Ultraman

 I can't even tell if that jack-o-lantern is supposed to be Ultraman, one of the other characters, or just sort of from that universe. The eyes are similar, but the mouth is a normal pumpkin mouth. Anyway, I give the artist a B+.

This is an ad for the Autumn Family Mart Festival. If you spend ¥700 or more, you have a chance at winning a prize. Maybe the prize has something to do with Ultraman this time, but usually at these sort of events you win the canned coffee they couldn't sell, or something.

Happy Halloween to one and all.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - Crazy Party Night : Pumpkins Strike Back

We'll soon be 80 short days away from the spookiest night of the year! Time to break out the Halloween music. Kyary, of course, had another Halloween song a few years back, Fashion Monster. Pumpkins Strike Back seems to be an obvious reference to that of an empire striking back, so we can all look forward to even more Halloween music in the future.

Again, the chorus is very poetic. It captures the joy of a crazy party night so well, but, at the same time, it recognizes what Halloween is all about. It makes us examine our own mortality. It might cause our innermost fears to come to the surface, and in the end we can only but go mad realizing the absurdity of this reality... so it becomes all that much more of a crazy party night. The chorus goes like this:

Pum pum pum with pumpkin,
Dancing dancing Halloween,
Kawaii o-bake no Halloween (a cute ghost's Halloween),
Pu pum with pumpkin,
Crazy crazy crazy night,
Dancing dancing pumpkin,
Crazy crazy party night.

The Halloween displays have been up at a lot of stores for about two weeks. I can't believe Halloween is less than fifty days away! Here are some paper plates that are sure to make you the coolest out of place man at a children's Halloween party!

"Now, it is Halloween today! I will carry out appearance of a pumpkin and will surprise everybody!"

Again, this quote sounds like something Jesus would say, but I could totally see Mary teaching Jesus about this. We'll never know for sure because most contemporary bibles leave out almost of the Halloween party chapters.

Pumpkin Pudding Kit Kat Review

Japanese Food Review #70

 In honor of Hallow's Eve, this week The Gaybot Times is holding a "Pumpkin Flavored Treat Spooky Fun Challenge." Just like in the potato challenge, there are only two entrants. Nestle created the first entrant. Kit Kat is celebrating this most holy of holidaze by creating a flavor that symbolizes a treat we all know and love: green jack-o-lantern filled with pumpkin pudding that magically doesn't ooze out of the eyes and mouth. I would normally call that a squash, but I guess Japan follows Australian English in this instance and green things are also pumpkins. Like most flavored Kit Kats, it's made with flavored white chocolate. It was very sweet, I'd say creamy (puddingy?), and had a bit of a squash taste to it.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 5  It was interesting, but in the end it was too sweet, and it's difficult to say if it tasted like pumpkin pudding since I don't know what that is.
Girlbot: 3  She said it smelled like a pumpkin, but it tasted like plain white chocolate. I vehemently disagree.
Overall: 4

Will the other snack also not be very good. Check back soon for the exciting conclusion!
 

Trick or Loft

Every year the department store Loft makes a Halloween theme song. This one is amazing. Dare I say it's better than the 2011 song? This has got to be played at every Halloween party this year.

Korean Zombies

This is T-ara, a Korean group, and they're mildly popular in Japan. This song, Lovey Dovey, is about 9 months old, but... Halloween. I consider it the Korean Thriller. I'm not sure what they're saying, but it seems to me lovey dovey and zombies often go together.

Spooky Gum Dance

I don't know if this actually had anything to do with Halloween. It's a 2-year-old ad for long lasting mint gum.

Halloween Roast Beef Giveaway

Asahi gets Halloween, okay? That's why they're offering this amazing deal. All you have to do is buy a six pack of beer, fill out the post card on the inside of the box, attach a 50 yen stamp and then sit back and wait to find out if you're one of 200 lucky people nationwide to win 500 grams of roast beef. Pretty sweet deal. By the way, girlbot actually sent the postcard in.

Get the Ladies on the Halloween Dance Floor

Every year Loft, a department store in Japan, makes an unbelievably good Halloween song, but they really only play it in the store. Pump these links at your Halloween bash. This year's song, Go! Halloween Hero is pretty rad. (Click on "special movie") I think my favorite line is, "Let's go laughing, crazy, crazy laughing." This is followed closely by, "Let's go eating, crazy, crazy eating." Last year's song is still the best ever.

Fashion Monster cm Part 2

I can't stress this enough. I truly wish all of you the happiest of Halloweens from the very bottom of my heart. You all remember the first G.U. Kyary ad, right? This one is way better. I like when she bites the old dude, he turns into a robot vampire.

Happy Roctober!!

Awhile ago, I wrote about Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's new cm Fashion Monster. It turns out that it's her new hit single as well! It is her fourth music video, and, I'm inclined to say, her worst. It's still pretty insane. It seems timed for Halloween. The Japanese start selling Halloween crap in mid-September despite the fact that they don't celebrate the holiday. And it's not unusual to see the Christmas displays the day after Halloween despite the fact that Christians basically don't exist here. I think this video would be better if Kyary did that awesome monster dance the whole time instead of not fake playing that fake guitar she's holding. This really does get me in the mood for Halloween, though. All the classic monsters are here. You've got the monster from Frankenstein, the Halloween Easter bunny, some sort of muppet guy, ....uh, the moon, everyone.

Fashion Monster

If you're like me, you can barely sleep because of Halloween Fever. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is adding to the excitement this year by making commercials for the cheap clothes retailer G.U. For those of you freaked out by this ad, let me assure you, Kyary is almost certainly not a vampire yet. I saw an interview where she explained that the camera was actually upside-down when they shot it and then they flipped it. At first I was like, "What the?!" Then I realized, "Oh upSIDE-down!" I hope that clears it up for you. Anyway, it's just further proof that the Japanese are light-years ahead in special effect technology (watch any Godzilla for proof). There's also this video that you don't need to watch:


A couple things here. First, the slogan for this campaign is something like, "Towards a free adult." Remember when we were kids and couldn't dress like monsters? We're finally old enough to! Second, Kyary really has been wearing vampire teeth lately. Though it's not popular, it is a legitimate fashion in Japan. There are a ton of cool fashions in this video. If you make it to about 1:10 you'll see my next haircut. It had never occurred to me to ask for a Frankenstein before.