Everyone hail to the Pumpkin Queen!

One key factor that got me interested in Japan way, way back in the day was Sailor Moon. I remember racing home after school and frantically trying to finish my homework by the time it aired at 4 pm because I wanted to give it my complete and undivided attention.

When I had to go away to 6th grade camp for a week, I begged my mom to set up the VCR to record the brand new, freshly dubbed "Sailor Moon S" season premiering on Cartoon Network.

All my other friends were obsessed with "Friends" at the time. I never got into Rachel and Ross, nor did I care about crazy Phoebe's antics, so it's safe to say I missed out on quite a few late 90's/early 2000's cultural references, but I regret none of it.

Screw "Friends", it was all about the power of the moon!

This year, for Halloween, my fabulous roommate helped all my childhood dreams come true. She painstakingly handstitched a Sailor Moon costume for me- essentially without a pattern for anything except for the sailor style collar.

When Halloween finally rolled around, I transformed into the soldier of love and justice and she threw on her fur cloak and applied facepaint to become the wolf girl, Princess Mononoke. Together, we biked to school, giggling and praying that we wouldn't cause a traffic accident.

Impromptu photo shoot!

Needless to say, the staff went absolutely mental. At first they thought we were just being weird foreigners, until we reminded them of the day's significance. After the morning meeting, the reception staff shuffled us outside and there was an impromptu photo shoot.

The photos lasted the entire day. I won't lie- it was really fun, however I don't think I could ever be a serious cosplayer. I was absolutely drained by the end of the day!

The best Halloween moment that I've experienced in a long while happened when 4 of us were riding our bikes to our local bar. We rounded a corner and saw a group of about 12 children and their moms walking down the street- in costume! Since we'd been on the way to the bar to hand out candies, we stopped and gave the candies to the kids instead ( a much better choice than giving it to the drunkards, in my opinion). The kids were absolutely awestruck by the presence of Sailor Moon and Mononoke, not to mention that we were real, live Americans and a Briton! Who knew!

Friday, of course, was the real kicker. Sabina and I threw another house party and it was a wild success. We had plenty of food, some games and heaps of costumes. Best of all, no noise complaints!

So, while we may not ever live up to the expectation of the BEST assistant language teachers that our school has ever had, we're going to make damn sure that we were the most fun!