Explore Japan's Ghost World this Halloween and party with kooky yokai and shapeshifting obake creatures in this family-friendly spook-fest!  Kids of all ages can come in costume and enjoy the thrills and chills of Halloween and the delights of fall festival—Japan-style!—with a kid-friendly haunted house, spooky animated short films and a live scary sound effects performance, ghost stories, mask-making, creepy candy sculptures, fall festival games and more!  

Schedule:

Live Foley Performance with Goro Koyama + Spooky Animated Short Films Performances are at 12:30pm, 1:30pm, and 2:30pm. Please pre-select your performance time with your ticket purchase.

What gives scary movies their creep factor? It’s Foley sound effects artists who make doors squeak, monsters chomp, and thunderstorms boom and crackle. This special event features Oscar-nominated animated films with a live sound effects performance by a Foley artist right in the theater. Goro Koyama, an internationally recognized Foley artist for movies such as Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Vikings (TV series), will teach you the art of making spooky sounds using everyday objects!

Animated films shown during the performance:
Possessions (13 min, 2013 Oscar-nominated Oscar Short Film)  

Directed by Shuhei Morita. A lost samurai is caught in a storm and seeks shelter in a seemingly abandoned house, only to find a succession of bizarre household objects come to life. 
Scary rating: 2 (out of 5)

Danemon Ban—The Monster Exterminator (10 min, 1935)
Directed by Yoshitaro Kataoka. Danemon Ban attempts to rid a haunted castle of spooks. 
Scary rating: 2 (out of 5)

Japanese Haunted House (Obake no Yashiki)
Children enter a classic Japanese Haunted House to discover some of Japan’s most famous ghosts and goblins — a ghost (yurei) in the graveyard, the long neck woman (rokurokubi) and a one-eyed boy (hitotsume kozo) who scares children by making his enormous eye glow and sticking out his long tongue!

Festival Games
Enjoy fun Japanese festival games at yatai vendor booths such as wanage (ring toss), superball scooping, shateki (rubber band flinging) and senbonbiki (pull a string to get a mystery gift) and win prizes!

100 Scary Stories
Join a storyteller in the Kaidan Hyaku-Monogatari (“100 Ghost Stories”) tradition. As each tale is told, candles are extinguished one by one to create an eerie atmosphere where an obake might just appear.

3D Trick Art
Create the ultimate selfie with a Halloween-themed 3D Trick Art photobooth! A popular phenomenon in Japan, trick art is a large-scale work of art that seemingly adds a third dimension, which the audience can enter and interact with.

Creepy Candy
Candy 5, a trained amezaiku artist, will entertain and mesmerize audiences by creating amazing ghost- and goblin-shaped candy for children! Amezaiku is a traditional Japanese candy craft in which an artist shapes multi-colored taffy into incredible, edible sculptures.

O-men Mask Making
Decorate your own o-men paper mask and change your appearance into a demon, fox or whatever character you like this Halloween! An o-men mask lets you take on the character of another person, animal or spirit. Typical o-men have long included demons and foxes, although today you will see other colorful masks, even plastic faces of anime characters!