Warning! This blog post is long! 
My apologies to the students who don't like long posts.
(You know who you are!)
When I was a little girl, Halloween was such a fun holiday!
In elementary school, we always made Halloween projects during Art Class. The most common scenes in our art projects were witches (魔女), jack o’ lanterns , bats (コウモリ), and black cats with arched backs (背を丸くする怒った猫）. I became very good at drawing all of them. The colors we used for these projects were always orange and black. The teacher would display our spooky 〈気味悪い) pictures on the walls, and the atmosphere in the class became fun. We knew that Halloween was coming soon!
When I was in elementary school, my family lived in the suburbs (市街）of a large city. We lived in a neighborhood with many houses. There were lots of other children in the houses around us.
As Halloween approached, the stores became full of Halloween decorations, candy, and costumes (衣装). While my mother stocked up on (買いだめする) candy in the candy aisle (通路 / コーナ), my sister and I were with all the other children in the costume aisle. There were many kinds of costumes that you could buy： cowboys and princesses, clowns and famous characters from TV, like Spiderman.
These costumes were cheap and flimsy (薄っぺら). They were made to only be worn for one evening. The most important part of the costume was the mask (仮面) ！ When you wore the mask, you could become someone else! You could become a fairy (妖精）or a gorilla, or for the older kids a scary （怖い) monster! Here is a website with the type of costumes I'm talking about:
Often we would make our own costumes. We might dress like a scarecrow (案山子) or a cat. Or wear scary plastic vampire (吸血鬼) teeth! I remember that my aunt dressed like a hula dancer one year.
On Halloween evening, we put on our costumes. My mother prepared the candy in a large bowl, and sat it near the front door, inside. As it began to get dark, children would leave their houses dressed in their costumes. It was magical to see all the different costumes. Some people were very creative. And some of the older boys were dressed in very scary costumes!
We walked around with an older relative (親戚）or a parent, and we went from house to house. We rang the doorbell or knocked on the door, and shouted, “Trick or treat!”
Sometimes we thought it was funny to say,
“Trick or treat!
Smell my feet!
Give me something good to eat!”
In the old days, teenage boys would do something mischievous (いたずら）to houses where no candy was being passed out. They might throw toilet paper up into the trees. My grandfather told me about a time that they took a farmer’s wagon apart, and put it back together up on the barn roof. It seems that this was a popular "trick" for people to play at that time.
Anyway, when we yelled, “Trick or treat,” someone would open the door. Sometimes the person was dressed normally. But many people who answered the door were dressed in costumes too. Maybe a clown would answer the door. Or something more scary. We would hold out our bags or buckets shaped like a jack o’ lantern, and the person would put some candy into it. Our bags or buckets became more and more full of candy!
Some people decorated their yards, porches or windows for Halloween. Some of the displays were very scary for a little girl like me. Some people played scary music and sounds on speakers outside their homes.
I remember one house that terrified me. There was a very large cardboard box 〈ダンボル箱) on the front porch. In the box a flap was cut that could be pushed open from the inside. Children would walk to the box and a big furry (毛だらけ）hand with long claws (鉤爪) would come out through the flap and hold candy for the children to take. Only the bravest (度胸ある) children could accept the candy from that scary hand. My mother urged me to go get some candy from the hand, but I was too scared! I couldn’t do it.
When we had gone around to many houses, and our buckets and bags were full of candy, and our legs were tired of walking, we would go home and pour all of our candy out onto the table or floor. My sister and I would compare how much we each had, and what kinds of candy we each got. My parents would often be more lenient (厳しくない）than usual and let us eat quite a lot of our candy on Halloween night. The rest (残り) of the candy was saved to eat on the following days, little by little.
On Halloween night, children went to bed tired, their bellies full of sugar! It was a wonderful holiday when I was a little girl.
For the children who were too old to dress up and go trick or treating, or for people who didn’t have young children at home, the most fun part of Halloween was to stay at home waiting for trick or treaters to ring the doorbell. It was wonderful to look out the door at the children dressed up in their costumes and pass out candy!
It seems like Halloween has changed in the U.S. since I was a child. I don't think I would enjoy Halloween in the U.S. very much now. But when I was a child, it was such a fun holiday. I'm so glad that I had the chance to enjoy Halloween in the 1970's.