One magical night in Nagoya

After having worked the whole Silver Week holiday, I asked my boss if it was OK to use some vacation days and go back to Sweden for two weeks. He first thought I said one week and was a bit skeptical but relented. After I understood that he though I would be back in five days (which is a bit short since the just the travel to and from my parents' place takes three days) I pointed out that I would actually be gone for two whole weeks. He then said that that was pretty much impossible, but I argued that since I had just lost four public holidays to work and then had my salary deducted too, I did not feel that motivated to work. And since I did not have anything in particular that needed to be done in October, it was also a good time to use up the vacation days, and I was finally allowed to go on vacation.

In Nagoya they had 肉まん風パン, "bread that is similar to steamed buns with meat". I like nikuman (the steamed buns) and tried this bread. It was pretty good, but not as good as the steamed buns.

They also had chocolate that said "blueberry ice cream flavor". Why not "blueberry flavor"? Does blueberry ice cream not taste like blueberries? The chocolate tasted mainly like "chocolate", though.

I bought some surprisingly cheap tickets to Sweden (only 60% of what I paid the last time). I had a very early flight from Nagoya to Europe, so I had to fly from Sapporo to Nagoya the night before. I found a magic bar in Nagoya (there are many) and spent an hour and a half there. It was fun.

On the way to magic bar "Move"

The magician in magic bar Move

Unlimited train travel

My university keeps asking me to fly through weird countries to save money on the business trips, but then they buy me train tickets that say "can go from the airport to anywhere in Germany", and a similar unlimited ticket for the return trip. This cannot be the cheapest way to get me to my destination, can it? Can we stop buying these weird things and just get me to Germany through a shorter and more convenient route instead? :-)

Flying to Germany

In Japan, there is something called "Silver Week". This is a bunch of public holidays located the same week, so you get a fairly (by Japanese standards) long holiday. In 2015, it was located on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, giving most people a five day weekend.

I spotted a woman with lots of playing cards on her suitcase.

I, however, had to go to Germany at 4:30 in the morning of the Sunday of that five day weekend, and came back on Friday evening. This was a business trip, so four of the five days off ended up being working days for me. And since they were public holidays in Japan, I did not get paid for those days. After getting back home, they even asked me to file for pay deduction for the Thursday, since they thought the business trip was not work enough and the Thursday was a day you were supposed to be working. So I ended up losing four days off and getting a pay deduction of 30,000 yen. Which did not make the trip that enjoyable. The work was pretty boring stuff too. The food was good, though.

The JAL international lounge at Narita has great curry! And my boss has VIP status from all his business trips, so he let me in as a guest.

The lounge also has unlimited alcohol, but since I do not like alcohol, I did not take advantage of this.

A Japanese wedding again

I was invited to another summer wedding, this time one of my magician friends. I also knew the bride from her coming to our magic bar quite often before they started dating.

The wedding was held up in the mountains on the outskirts of the city, so there was a free bus service provided. While waiting around for the bus, I ran into some other people that looked suspiciously like they were also going to the same wedding. They thought my t-shirt was weird for going to a wedding. It says 「ある意味神」 which translates roughly as "In some sense, a God". Since I planned to button my shirt and put on a jacket when we arrived at the wedding, I figured any t-shirt would be fine, but they still took photos of me and put them on Facebook.

At the wedding I met lots of people I had not seen in a long time, which was fun. There was lots of really good food too.

A friend who just barely fit into the suit he wore at his own wedding one year ago was teased by the master of ceremonies throughout the whole party for having "very tight pants".

Parts of the party were outside, so people sprayed themselves with bug spray in huge amounts.

When it was time for the main dinner, I went looking for my assigned seat. I first looked around where everyone else from our magic bar was sitting, but my name was not there. Not at the table for staff from the bar nor from customers of the bar. Since I know the bride too, I checked at the table for friends of the bride and the table for friends of the groom too, but no luck. Finally I found my name on the table for "Family of the groom"... So I ended up sitting with the father, mother, uncle, and brother of the groom. I had met the mother once in an elevator, but the rest of them were new to me. They looked at me with some suspicion (them being fairly sure I am not one of their relatives), but I pointed to the card on the table with my name. My friends keep springing weird surprises on me at their weddings...

My seating arrangements were a bit surprising

The people I sat with

The cake was decorated by the guests

The bride

The groom

People I know

Groom and me

At Japanese weddings, some people send video messages if they cannot attend. This time there was a message from a guy who came to our magic bar quite a lot when he lived in Sapporo. He had also managed to get the famous (on TV in Japan) magician Akira Fujii to participate in the message, which was pretty surprising.

Cake cutting and giving your significant other a piece of cake is always important at Japanese weddings. This time they also got to "feed" one friend of their choice.

Cutting the cake

The "first bite"

The "really big bite"

Feeding a guest of your choice

"Feeding" one more guest

There was a large selection of meats grilled before your eyes

These tomatoes were excellent

Cheese was melted on the spot for you

One of our regulars from the magic bar recently ate a lot of tomatoes on a trip to Hong Kong, so people kept bringing him tomatoes at the wedding too.

After the first big dinner was over, everyone relocated to our magic bar and there were a few more hours of partying. I ended up mainly working; making drinks, washing the dishes, doing magic, etc. It was still pretty nice, since the old team that I used to work with were all there and we worked together again/

No rest for the wicked

People trying to poison me by mail?

One day when I got home there was a notice that someone had tried to deliver a package but that I had not been home. The name of the sender did not look familiar to me. I called and had it delivered an hour later. It turned out to be full of raw blow fish. So I did what most people would do when they get poisonous fish delivered from some unknown person: I ate all of it for dinner. It was good.

Closer inspection of the inner layer of wrapping (there was a paper bag around a Styrofoam box around a plastic wrap around a plastic cup; they like layered packaging in Japan)  showed that it was actually from one of my friends. It was a thank you for attending her wedding. The reason the name was unfamiliar was that I had never really noticed what her new name would be after getting married.