To: All Japanese mothers who are re-learning English
with their children

First, let me introduce myself briefly. I am Machiko Kobayashi, Japanese-born, and have been living in California (San Francisco and Los Angeles) for 19 years.
I am a mother of two teenagers, a boy and a girl. My husband and I, together with a few dedicated school teachers, started My Best English project almost 4.5 years ago and started marketing My Best English videos last April in Japan. Since then, we've met (electronically) so many Japanese mothers who are working hard to bringing up their child(ren) to be Japanese-English bilingual.

It is my great pleasure to write short letters, which will be shared with such wonderful mothers through R-Train. (Many thanks to ビコ-san)

I thought about how to start my letter and figured that it would be perfect to start it with the Halloween topics.

As many of you already know, October 31st is Halloween. In California (and in many of the US states), the daylight saving time ends at the beginning of the last week of October and it gets dark around 6 pm on Halloween. Christmas (Hanukkah for Jewish kids) and Halloween are the two biggest events every child looks forward to. Every child (and quite a few adults, too) dresses up in his/her favorite costume and goes trick-or-treating. (Adults usually go to Halloween parties at their work or at their friends'.) Many schools, preschools and day care centers host big Halloween parades during school hours, and kids and teachers in different costumes walk around the school and schoolyard. This is very fun to watch and you can find out which costumes are the most popular each year. All shopping malls sponsor a "Halloween Costume Contest" to draw many trick-or-treaters as well.

Some people start as early as September to convert their homes into scary haunted houses. Because the same people do this every year, neighbors know which houses become haunted and many anxious kids (mostly teens) form long waiting lines outside of such houses on Halloween night. In the haunted houses, family members dress up as ghosts, invites the trick-or-treaters in and enjoy scaring them. Of course, they do not charge any admission fees to get into these houses. They simply do this for fun!

Although many people do not go to such extremes, they dress up their front porches with spiders, spider webs, skeletons and goblins. They also place skillfully carved jack-o-lanterns on their driveways, change their front yards into graveyards and even play eerie music to welcome trick-or-treaters. Little ones receive tons of candies that they cannot finish for a long time. To save their little teeth, many parents choose to donate the candies to less fortunate kids through their children's schools.

There are always a few "main" Halloween streets in any local community and one can easily find them by just driving by. Many houses on the "main" streets are dressed up and you will find hundreds of trick-or-treaters there.

Halloween is the night for every kid (and for many adults?) to remember throughout the year, and they've already started thinking about what they want to be for Halloween next year.

Let me finish this letter by introducing a poem by a very talented author, poet, illustrator and songwriter, Shel Silverstein.

ENTER THIS DESERTED HOUSE (by Shel Silverstein)

But please walk softly as you do.
Frogs dwell here and crickets too.

Ain't no ceiling, only blue
Jays dwell here and sunbeams too.

Floors are flowers---take a few.
Ferns grow here and daisies too.

Whoosh, swoosh---too-whit, too-woo,
Bats dwell here and hoot owls too.

Ha-ha-ha, hee-hee, hoo-hoooo,
Gnomes dwell here and goblins too.

And my child, I thought you knew
I dwell here. . . and so do you.

Thank you very much for reading my Halloween letter.

Machiko KobayashiMy Best English
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