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Updated Oct 31, 2022, 9:12am EDT
East Asia

Japan’s Jimi Halloween festival showcases the mundane horrors of daily life

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The News

Japan celebrates Halloween a little differently. At the annual Jimi Halloween festival, attendees forego dressing up in traditional spooky getups. Instead they don something even scarier: costumes showing the mundanity of daily life.

Pumpkins are seen at The Pop up Farm ahead of Halloween, in Flamstead, St Albans, Britain, October 26, 2022.
REUTERS/Andrew Couldridge
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Know More

Jimi Halloween, which roughly translates to “mundane halloween” has been running since 2014 and was established on the blog Daily Portal Z by a group of adults who were too embarrassed to dress up in costumes, according to Japanese art and culture site Spoon & Tamago.

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Revelers dress up in normal clothing as a person engaging in a regular daily task, and the costumes are usually so plain they require some explanation.

Here are a few favorites.

A cashier looking away while you input your PIN

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A person waiting to leave their apartment until their neighbor has left the hallway

A Just Stop Oil protester

A person taking a selfie with an Instagram filter

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A person on the second floor of a shopping mall watching what’s happening on the first floor

A person whose bottle of Coke has exploded

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