Amami Superman Photography

We had nearly 60 children participate in this year's Halloween parade. We were still missing a few of them in this photo but by the time we got underway, they showed up and we were off trick-or-treating. During this photo, most of the parents are standing on the other side of the street where I am. It is a bit hard herding children through the downtown streets of Amami, but the parents were quite helpful this year and things went relatively smooth.



We first practice by going to my mother-in-law's store and my brother-in-law's store. I try to make sure that they are enthusiastic about what they're doing so they yell "trick or treat" as loud as they can and to also say "thank you" when they receive their candy. Then we move across the street and start the actual trick-or-treating.



The first shop we hit up is Eco Support Amami. E.S.A. is ran by a family friend Takayuki Yoshikawa. He sells solar panels for residential homes. His wife, Yuuko, is a personality at the local radio station, D-WAVE 77.7FM, and speaks English very well.



We then move right next door to a optical store called Tahara Megane. "Megane" means "glasses" in Japanese.

When we first started our trick-or-treat parade years ago, we used to buy all the candy and divvy it out to all the different stores we were going to visit. The downtown part of Amami where all the shops and stores are have a thing called "torikai" (A torikai is a sort of group the local store owners on a particular street make to help with find ways to stimulate their businesses). The torikai hold festivals on these streets 3 or 4 times a year and they asked us to do our trick-or-treat parade on the day they hold their autumn festival. That means they provide the candy, but we don't get to choose the stores we get to visit. This was OK with us so we have been correlating with the torikai when we do our trick-or-treat parade for that past few years. It works out for all of us. Since it's a festival and we're walking down the middle of it, everyone wants to know what we're doing and how they can join us next time. It's a great way to promote our business.


Some kids have really awesome costumes, but they're not the most easiest costumes to get around in.



As I mentioned before, we don't get to chose which stores and shops we visit. This year we got to visit a lingerie shop. I kind of blushed we came to this shop.



We then made our way to around 20 shops or so. The kids collected quite a bit of candy and after almost 2 hours, we were almost home. At the very end, we made our way down the indoor arcade they have near the post office. It was pretty cool looking back at all the people from our group walking down it.

I said at the first of this post that things went relatively smooth and they did, but it still takes a lot out of you. I have a pretty audible voice, but making sure everyone could hear me took it's toll. The day after, because my voice was so gone, everyone asked me if I had a cold.