Sweet job

Happy birthday in English, "Jonas" in Japanese.

My birthday was a Saturday, so after dinner I went to our magic bar to perform magic. It was an extremely busy night! It started with a group of 20 coming when we open (and some smaller groups at the same time), which makes you really tired. Then it was pretty much completely full until 1 A.M. or so, and we even had to put people who did not know each other together at the same tables since we ran out of chairs... We had to turn 10 people away too (and on a normal "good" day, we get between 10 and 20 people total, from 20:00 to 05:00).

I did magic non-stop from start to 1 A.M. or so, then had a short respite but more customers showed up and I ended up performing until 3 A.M.

At around 1 when things were calming down a bit, a colleague brought out a cake that said "Happy birthday ヨーナス". But as soon as I blew out the candles, lots of customers showed up again, so we put the cake back in the refrigerator again...

Again, "happy birthday" with Latin letters and my name in Japanese... In our magic bar, if people ask for my name I usually reply "Jonas, as in the 'you' from Hokuyou-ginkou and the 'nasu' from nasubi". Japanese people often explain what Chinese characters they write their names with, since there are many possibilities for writing what is pronounced as the same name. I deliberately chose two words that people would not normally use to exemplify (the name of a bank and the word for eggplant), which sounds funny to Japanese people. So my colleague wanted the cake to say my name like that (洋茄子) but decided it would probably not be possible to get the cake shop people understand that over the phone, so we ended up with the usual ヨーナス. "Jonas" would have worked for me too, though :-)

Tai-yaki, my colleague eating a tai-yaki, and two of our favorite customers who brought tai yaki!

Some regulars that I had not seen in a very long time (since winter or spring) also showed up and they brought tai-yaki (basically waffles shaped like tai (a fish) and filled with sweet bean paste, custard, or something else) for us to eat.

All in all, a nice birthday.