Day 13 & 14: Ikebukuro Halloween

Halloween is approaching at a rapid pace, and you'll be happy to know it's celebrated in Japan too. However, there's no trick-or-treating and a far as I know, it's more of an adult holiday than in the west. That being said, I'm no expert and I'm definitely not out there doing on-the-ground interviews and reporting so take everything I say with a grain of salt. With that in mind, I've heard that in the past on Halloween, tons of people would gather in Shibuya in costumes and lots of people would be drinking and being rowdy.

But it looks like this year, Shibuya is closed for Halloween festivities. I personally don't care since it's not something I would do any way, but there are still other avenues for spreading your spooky holiday cheer. Yes, it was just a really long intro and segue into talking about what I did on day 13 and 14: Ikebukuro Halloween!

Ikebukuro Halloween, or IkeHalo, is basically a large cosplay event that takes place around Ikebukuro. There are stage events, parades, and of course, the opportunity to cosplay or take photographs of cosplayers. To cosplay or take photos, you need to sign up and pay the fee, but otherwise as a normal spectator, you can attend for free.

Day 13: Saturday, October 26

Just as you probably expected, I left for Ikebukuro Halloween much later than I should have, only arriving at just about 2 PM. It had started at 10 AM but my alarm isn't even scheduled to go off until 11:30 on days that I've worked, so I guess it's not all that unexpected.

I did manage to catch the end of the cosplay parade that was taking place though! It was going right through one of the main shopping streets, so it was hard to miss.

You can actually watch the entire parade (plus see cosplays that I saw at different locations!) in this video I found on YouTube!

After watching the end of the parade, I made my way to the roof-top deck area of the Sunshine City building as I thought that was the main area (I found out after both days that the actual main area was somewhere entirely different lol). I actually wasn't sure where you had to have a photographer ticket in order to take photos, or if a ticket would even be needed if you weren't taking photos on a 'real' camera, since I would just be using my phone if I were taking photos. It was stressing me out a bit, so I thought I would just go ahead and get a photographer ticket just in case I did want to take photos. It turned out they stopped selling on their English site on 10/24 and the Japanese site, although it did have some available tickets, wouldn't let me register to buy tickets without a Japnaese phone number. It seemed like a bunch of hoops to jump through, so I didn't deal with it.

All that to say, I don't have that many photos of the event myself! Luckily there are plenty of videos like the one above or searching the tag #池ハロ2024 on your social media app of choice.

I did probably break the rules to take this photo of a crazy cool beetle cosplay

Cosplayer seems to be @YepWn on Twitter

The event ended at 6 so after enjoying the atmosphere and marveling at some of the intricate cosplays, I decided to go play some crane games. What's a day in japan without some gambling right? I'm actually basically addicted at this point.

There are a few types of crane games I do not like to play. I wasn't allowed to take photos at the main place that I won prizes at and forgot later, so here's a helpful diagram. There are a lot of other types too but these are the main ones I see for prizes I usually want

The 3-claw claw machine is probably the most familiar one. I marked it as caution since sometimes the claws aren't very strong or can swing wildly, but generally I know what I am getting into. Most of the time I play these, it takes me a lot of tries though. I'm not a crane game expert though, so IDK if that's really a good benchmark.

The 2-claw over bars machine is something I play occasionaly but generally hate them since the bars the boxes sit on are so frustrating and I never know what I am supposed to do. I think I would like these more if I read some sort of guide or was better at physics.

The 2-claw over weird shimmy thing is generally pretty doable as long as you actually hit the thing with the claw. You won't win these on your first few coins but it's basically guaranteed progress, whereas something like a regular claw can reset itself if the item drops weird. Basically you are supposed to alternate grabbing the front and back loop to shimmy the item off the bar. I like to play these especially if someone has given up and the machine hasn't been reset, like if the arcade is busy. That way you have a bit of a head start.

The last relevant one is the hand machine. Basically you hold 1 button to go over and then afterwards another to go up. The hand is almost exactly as wide as the cubbies the prizes go in and you're supposed to line it up exactly so that the hand pushes the prize out. The nice thing is that if you nail the timing, the hand always pushes the prize out. It usually ends up being stopped by like 1mm of the hand hitting the cubby though. I like these because they seem to be pure skill and I only have myself to blame for losing. The speed does seem to change somewhat between runs though, but that could be my imagination.

Anyway, my haul for the day:

The middle figure is Yui from K-On!, which I was surprised to see getting merch after so many years. I got it in the shimmy machine, but it took me leaving and then coming back to the store to do it. I think it was close to like ¥2,000 or something, so I could have for sure gotten it cheaper at a secondhand shop, assuming they had stock. The other figure I actually won in the hand machine after only 2 tries (total of ¥200), which I know is cheaper than I could get it at a secondhand shop.

Because I had already bought the other two in the set at a shop for ¥1,200 each. And that's with damaged packing (although I couldn't tell tbh).

The rest is just junk I got in a gacha machine trying to win some expensive prizes figures. Basically a waste of ¥3,000 or something.

Day 14: Sunday, October 27

Today was a lot more of the same thing I did yesterday. I went and checked out some cosplay spots but didn't stay the whole time.

After that, I went and played a few more crane games. I think if I'm doing a tier list of crane game centers in Ikebukuro, it would be something like

• A - Tokyo Leisure Land Ikebukuro (pretty sure that's its name) - generally seems fair and all the machines were ¥100. Also has a lot of types of crane games and prizes.
• B - Adores
• B - ME (Motion Emotion)
• C - Round 1
• C - GIGO, I won't call it a scam since I've won there before (and even today!). The thing I don't like is that the machines start at ¥200 per play compared to ¥100 at other places. It does seem to have the newest/coolest stuff though.
• C - Capcom - Had lots of cool prizes, and a collab with Hololive and Moster Hunter but I thought it seemed expensive and it didn't have machines I liked lol
• D - Bandai Namco

I can't actually remember all of them that well so this tier list is basically a waste of time. Mostly just my sentiment I guess. I didn't spend more than a couple hundered yen in a lot of them though.

My haul for today:

I figured I might as well complete my [Yuru Yuri] merch set while I was at it lol Also who doesn't need more Miku? The Miku one was lucky because I only needed 1 play plus a free play coupon I got on the way into GIGO! The other little things were from the expensive gacha machine from yesterday so there goes another ¥2,000, but at least they were cuter this time