Greetings!
To celebrate the fall weather and the spirit of Halloween, my friends and I did a couple of fun things during the past few weeks. It was also a little surprising to see that Halloween is actually popular in Tokyo – there were costumes and decorations around the city.
Our first stop was this buffet called ‘Sweets Paradise,’ which has a few locations throughout Tokyo. My friends Stefania, Brittani, and I went to the location in Shibuya (and it took us a couple of minutes to find the actual entrance that is located on the side of the building rather than the front). You enter, pay the ticket machine ￥1,480, and then have 80 minutes to eat an unlimited amount of various cakes! They also have some regular food (pasta and curry), but most of it consists of desserts.
Since it is fall, they had pumpkin cakes in addition to green tea cakes, roll cakes, mousse, tiramisu – pretty much anything you wanted, they had. Needless to say, the three of us ate too much and basically felt like we were in a sweet-coma afterwards.
My friend Stefania also found a free event to go to in Hatsudai, so a couple of days later we ventured to an abandoned hospital. I believe it was hosted by ‘ArtGig Tokyo 2,’ and it was open from noon until midnight. We decided to go later, around 7:00pm. The information said to bring a flashlight, so we made sure to pack one!
At the entrance was a sign to go down into the basement, and at the bottom of the stairs we were greeted and asked to enter a raffle. They had run out of maps, but the lady told us that the layout of the building was square, with a larger room in the center.
It was really dark, and flashes were not allowed, so I was not able to get many pictures. However, it was sufficiently creepy, and there were art displays set up in almost every corner. There was a black & white animated film playing on the wall in a tatami room, a CT scan room where actors were pretending to be doctors, a sokushinbutsu (the mummy of a Buddhist priest and a result of self-mummification), and a main performance featuring a clown (yikes!) in the main room.
Overall, though, I must admit that, as a fan of survival horror games, I most enjoyed the ability to wander through an abandoned hospital basement. There were abandoned stretchers and equipment left around, store closets full of random devices that were falling apart – the atmosphere was very creepy, definitely.
If I’m in Tokyo again around this time of year, I definitely will keep an eye out for any more free events hosted by this organization!