Japanese Halloween (or not) Decorations

I'll admit, I've never been a big Halloween person. As a kid I was into the candy, but not as much dressing up in costumes, not at all the parties.

I don't mind that it's not the same kind of holiday in Japan. In fact, ten years ago, it seemed like a normal day to me. These days, it seems like stores have caught on to make Halloween a decorative or marketing based holiday. I don't imagine Japanese kids will ever go trick or treating.

(I'm not even sure what's going on in western countries as far as that goes. It might be back to normal but I'm guessing the pandemic has kept a lot of kids from trick or treating for the last two years.)

I'm enjoying my warm mid-October weekends by updating the patio. I went to a bigger Daiso store in town and picked up some "terra cotta" style pots that I'm guessing are just painted terra cotta color. I also picked up some water based paint. I have tried painting this kind of pots before using regular acrylic paint and it did not really stick or look opaque on the pots. I was impressed by this paint. Maybe it's the color (ink black is the only color I bought) but I'm guessing it's the type of paint. This small bottle was maybe one third full, but I only needed one coat.

It covered four small pots and then I also painted a bigger pot that already had a plant in it. 

This weekend I painted two more small pots and another big one. There is still paint left. I didn't paint the bottom (as you can see in the photo) and only painted a few centimeters of the inside, to be clear.

Because these pots are sort of orange, I thought they would be nice to paint jack-o-lantern faces onto. The orange and black Halloween colors were a happy accident.

Since it's not normal to find carving pumpkins in Japan, this could be a nice option. I also thought it would be less time consuming and easier for small kids as a Halloween craft. Probably safer than using a knife? I haven't seen carving knives for sale in Japan anyway. 

I made a jack-o-lantern looking face for fun, but I wasn't using the right kind of brush for it. I think this would be fun for a month or less as a decoration, then later it could be totally painted over in the same black.

I wanted these pots black for uniformity and to make the color of the plants pop more. Halloween themed or not, painting these pots achieved my goal when I couldn't find any planters that I liked.