**Mysterious Giant Creature and Flock of Birds** A large horned beast stands in a desolate landscape while a flock of birds perches on a barren tree. The surreal and eerie atmosphere evokes ancient or otherworldly presence. Real sighting or artistic vision? **What do you think?** #GiantCreature# #MysteriousBeast# #BarrenLandscape# #SurrealScene# #Cronovisor# #AncientMystery# #PlanetSecrets#

Here's the trick-or-treating haul. Shrimp chips. Octopus paste. And a Kumon coupon. That's Halloween (aka Week 8) of our Family Gap Year™️. This was a hard one, because no one does Halloween like an American suburb. For the kids, it's probably the 2nd holiday (behind Xmas) in terms of excitement. And it's just not a big deal in Tokyo. Once again, Lisa was deep in Facebook groups to try to find things to do. She carried a pretty big emotional burden of getting it "right" for them. We start at an international school at 10:30 am that has a "haunted house." It turns out it was mostly 6 year olds speaking French and Japanese. Our 12 year old didn't even want to go inside (but we met the head of schools, who made a pitch to enroll there). Next we went to a "mask building" event in Roppongi Hills. Turns out that you needed tickets and it was sold out. Kids are dejected (but not that much since it was like a Santa photo shoot). Third stop (also a ChatGPT recommendation) was another street where you get tickets and the stores set up stands to hand out one piece of candy. Tons of kids (mostly little ones), all Japanese and just a very surreal scene. It was super orderly and the closest thing to trick-or-treating. That's where we got the Octopus Paste. We then needed a break so went to our safe space (the Park Hyatt roof bar) for some drinks and French fries, then headed to Shinjuku (aka Times Square) to see the paraders. I did run into a random group of westerners rapping 2Chainz' Birthday Song, so it felt a bit like home. Ended up in a big arcade playing Japanese video games as a family and failing to win prizes with the mechanical claws. My eldest wrote in her notebook, "it was so random, that it was really fun."