I went to Japan last year for my birthday, around Halloween. I wasn’t planning to be there for the event, but it almost felt like New Year’s Eve, and one night in Tokyo my boyfriend and I happened to miss the last train home. Taxis are extremely expensive in Japan and so we were not the only ones stranded. We stayed in Shibuya, wandering around overnight with few local graffiti artists and tens of thousands of Japanese people, all dressed up for Halloween. It was like a hallucination. The Japanese obsession with imaginary characters and the opportunity to dress up made the gathering addictive – and for this reason my friend Ecy nicknames Halloween “Heroin”. I loved the contrast between the peaceful Japanese nature and the grotesque mess of sexual, horrifying and DIY characters. The next day I bought more rolls of film and missed the train for a second night in a row…
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