Tokyo’s Shibuya district is trading flamboyant costumes for mundane everyday situations as Jimi Halloween takes over on November 1, 2026. Organised by online magazine Daily Portal Z, the festival celebrates unremarkable moments with humor while local authorities push to curb rowdy tourist crowds.
Walk across Shibuya Crossing on any normal day, and you share space with more than 500,000 people marching, walking, skateboarding, and dancing through the world’s busiest intersection.
When October ends, that everyday foot traffic turns into a spectacle that local leaders have spent years trying to rein in. Halloween in Shibuya has evolved from a neighborhood gathering into a logistical headache.
Ken Hasebe, who has been the mayor of Shibuya since 2015, faced a turning point on October 29, 2022. Following the tragic crowd crush in Itaewon, Seoul, city officials worried that the dense crowds packed around Shibuya station could face a similar disaster.
In response, the local government turned hard away from promoting the holiday. Instead of marketing “ShibuHallo,” the administration launched public campaigns urging people to stay away and plastered the district with a different slogan: Goodbye Bad Halloween.
Daily Portal Z Starts Jimi Halloween as an Alternative to Costumed Chaos
While the city government fights rowdy nightlife in the streets, a quieter counter-celebration is thriving online and in local venues. Known as Jimi Halloween or Mundane Halloween, the movement began around 2014 when adults at the online magazine Daily Portal Z wanted to join the holiday fun without wearing flashy witch or zombie outfits that left them feeling embarrassed.
The term Jimi
translates from Japanese dictionaries as plain, simple, subdued, sober
.
Rather than competing for the most terrifying look, participants dress up to capture awkward, irritating, or deeply familiar moments from daily life. Online magazine Daily Portal Z hosts an event where participants dress up as ordinary people doing everyday tasks and unremarkable situations.
Daily Portal Z Displays Grocery Store Mishaps and Stock Photos Brought to Life
Costume ideas submitted by participants highlight the humorous side of minor daily frustrations. Popular concepts range from relatable retail slip-ups to hyper-specific workplace moments.
Japan’s Jimi Halloween, a celebration of all things mundane – in pictureshttps://t.co/KkvEjvGFsn
- The shop assistant who gives customers a quick spray of deodoriser on their way out
- The visitor admiring a faucet so intricately designed that they hesitate to turn on the water
- The traffic marshal directing heavy machinery and buses
- The person portraying
work-life balance
- The person portraying
AI-generated mapo tofu
- The person who completely misses the point of Mundane Halloween
Photographer Tomohiro Ohsumi documented participants embodying these roles on November 1, 2026, turning mundane urban routines into whimsical artistic expressions. Blending style, creativity, and routine moments, this distinct style of celebrating Halloween has grown into a prominent cultural phenomenon within Tokyo’s Shibuya area.
Adults across Japan are embracing this unconventional take on the holiday—where everyday citizens become the costumes—diverging from the customary family-centered tradition focused on kids donning outfits and collecting candy.
Shibuya Implements Security Guards and Alcohol Sales Suspensions
Extra security guards are set to be stationed at 10 locations around Shibuya during the Halloween weekend. To manage Halloween week, authorities have implemented step-by-step measures, including erecting barriers surrounding the Hachiko dog monument and requesting that nearby merchants suspend alcohol sales.
Encouraging people to practice good etiquette through yearly initiatives, Mayor Hasebe presents a different option: hold festivities inside. He notes, It’s reached the point where people feel embarrassed to dress up.
Japan’s Jimi Halloween is back with costumes more mundane than ever! Thread of some of my favorites from 2026 🧵
