Susukino festival

Susukino festival, lots of tables, food, and drinks in the street.

Suskino festival is a three day event where bars and clubs in Sususkino put out tables on the streets and serve simple food and lots of drinks outdoors.

This year, Magic Bar Twister, where I do magic during the weekends, had a tent at the Susukino festival. So I was there doing magic during the evenings, and then carrying lots of heavy stuff when the festival time was over every night. You have remove all tables, cooking equipment etc. every night, since the street is only closed from 17.00 to 24.00 and cars have to be able to pass during the rest of the day and night. A lot of heavy lifting...

Our place, Magic Bar Twister!

But during opening hours, it was also a lot of fun. The first day I walked around in a yukata with playing card patterning, which was nice. The heavy lifting afterwards was not so good for my yukata though, and I ended up breaking one of my getas...

Me in my playing card yukata

The next day I instead wore a t-shirt that says "ある意味神" ("In some sense, a god"), which Japanese people think is really weird. That was a good way to make people stop and chat for awhile.

The last day I wore a t-shirt with "ドM" ("Super masochist") and also had lots of people come up and ask me if I actually knew what my t-shirt said.

My magician friend showed, as did my two Swedish friends. So he did some magic for them.

Down the street, another bar had all their waitresses in bunny girl costumes. Maybe a bit cold in the evenings, but popular with the customers.

Other places had yukatas that were very much shorter than the norm.

The festival is also vaguely religiously related, so the temples thundered by with palanquins and other things, trying to get through between the tables.

Another temple procession

One of our regular customers who works in a Chinese restaurant stopped by and gave us some Chinese desserts she had made herself.

The clean-up every evening was a real pain... I do not know how many times I ran up the stairs carrying heavy rocks, tables, chairs, gas canisters, food, etc. ... Everyone involved in the heavy lifting said "Susukino festival, never ever again!" afterwards, haha.