For the normally reserved Japanese, the macabre celebration of the dead is an excuse to slip on a wacky costume and let their hair down at boozy parties decorated with tombstones, skeletons and spiders.
"We got into Halloween when our children started to go to kindergarten," Eriko Yoshino told AFP, dressed as the Alice in Wonderland character Tweedledum at a kids parade.
"The children love it and it's fun to wear fancy dress and cook pumpkin dishes," she added, confiding: "Nothing too fancy -- something I can pop in the microwave."
With Halloween falling on a Monday this year, major weekend parades in Tokyo and Kawasaki, south of the capital, drew some 250,000 party-goers while Tokyo Disneyland also enjoyed a bumper two days.
Halloween is a billion-dollar industry in Japan with an estimated 20 million people nationwide getting into the grisly spirit.
Shops and bars are decked out with pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns, while restaurants and convenience stores offer pumpkin-flavoured drinks and desserts.
"I'll tell you why I've flown in," said a young reveller dressed as a rooster and identifying himself only as Chicken Shota.
"Too many chickens are being gobbled up around the world," he added, perched dexterously on a hoverboard outside a pub.
"My message for people is to stop persecuting chickens."
Dastardly pirates swigging from beer cans caroused with skimpily clad fairies and Harry Potter hexed a crooning Elvis as police battled to control heaving crowds during a long Saturday fright night at Shibuya's scramble crossing.
