Hallo-Win! 🕷️🕸️🎃

I hope this year's Halloween season is one for us to win. As borders are reopening for international travel, I hope I'll be able to spend many more Halloween nights overseas since it's not so widely celebrated here in Singapore 🇸🇬

One year, I took off to Jiufen, Taiwan, where famous animator Hayao Miyazaki spent a few months creating the award-winning Spirited Away. Jiufen is super touristy during the day but at sunfall, all the people disappear and it seems like the spooks would appear, just like in the film, and especially on Halloween eve. It was an amazing experience traversing the narrow lanes here imagining I'm Chihiro/Sen, keeping a lookout for No Face and Haku

Another year, I gate-crashed the Halloween celebrations in Sendai, Japan. The festival is celebrated on a large scale in this cosplay-loving country. Shibuya in Tokyo goes crazy on this night with all sorts of ghouls and bakemono making their appearances. It was surprising that Sendai, a much smaller city in the northeast of Japan has also adopted this tradition really well. That night, I couldn't tell if I was absorbed into a portal to the underworld of onis, demons, anime, Jurassic, etc

I also had a bloody Halloween meal one year in Shanghai, China 🍔 The conversation between me and the waitress:
She: How do you like your beef?
Me: Medium rare please.
She: Still bloody huh 😬
Me: Ha, it's Halloween after all!
Gimme some blood, baby!!!