Halloween party at alife

Last year some of my friends said: "We are all going as zombies to a Halloween party. Where a foreigner is going to do a magic show. You should come. As a zombie." So we met at a Halloween party, and they looked quite a lot like zombies. Then I went to work and they went to a club called alife, that has the largest Halloween party in Sapporo (I think; they had 1600 guests last year).

My favorite costume at the party

This year they were not going as zombies, but they were going to alife, and they said I should stop by and say hello. So I did. One of them had spent several hours baking a Halloween birthday cookie for me (my birthday is at the end of October), so I got a present too. It was a cute cookie, and the taste was good too.

My friends not being zombies

A cookie for me

I saw a guy at the party that did some rope magic using a set of gimmicked ropes that some of my magician friends also use. He seemed to be doing magic to random strangers on his own initiative (not as a performer at the event). He also did contact juggling with a glass sphere. When I met him, there was also a Japanese girl who borrowed his glass sphere and did some contact juggling herself. She was pretty good too. She also spoke English very well. She told me she lived in Australia for some time and that she used to do busking where she got tips for doing contact juggling.

Guy who did contact juggling and some simple magic

Girl who spoke fluent English and did contact juggling

I ran into some people who had been at the H's Cafe Halloween party too. The guys with the red demon faces were at alife, and the two faced guy with his Darth Maul friend were there too. They were talking to some girls, and one of these girls had her birthday on the same day as mine. She was 16 years younger than me, though...

People from previous party and a girl with the same birthday as me

Someone spilled a glass of beer down the back of the girl with whom I share a birthday, so her friend had to wipe her back and bottom for her so as to limit the beer smell.

I ran into a guy who is the boss of the downstairs floor of alife (if I understood and remember correctly) who recognized me since last year. After the Halloween party a year ago, he came to our magic bar and recognized me as "the zombie from Halloween". Now he said he will drop by our magic bar again soon. Impressive that he both recognizes and remembers me.

There were two girls in bunny girl suits that liked to show off their buts to people.

They also wanted to take a photo together with me.

I saw some other people that I know too, and lots of people that wanted to take photos with me. Many people at the party were not in costume (though you did get 500 yen off on the entrance fee if you showed up in costume). Most people that were in costume were either wearing just a costume that they bought in a shop and wore as is, or they wore a costume that they bought in a shop and then they painted their faces with makeup.

A Japanese grave

Some people had very ambitious costumes. I liked the girl dressed like a character from the movie Avatar best. There were also some that had very original ideas. I liked the guy who was dressed as a grave. Some other things that were nice were groups of people all dressed according to the same theme. Lots of girls were also dressed in very skimpy outfits, which was probably pretty good in the super hot (because of overcrowding) club. Outside it was a very cold autumn night, though, so going home may not have been that great. But it seems that unlike me, most people change out of their costumes before going home.

Halloween party at alife 2013

alife has a small dance floor, which was very crowded.

In our magic bar, we are most busy from around 21 to about midnight. In Sapporo, the subway and buses stop shortly after midnight, so anyone looking to go home by public transportation and not partying until the morning (they start again at 06:00) leave at midnight. This meant I could skip work from about 23:45 and instead go to another Halloween party.

A corridor leading to the small (they also have two other dance floors, but they are more "tiny" than small) dance floor.

My friends had gone to the club "alife" (which is read as "ei life"), and a magician colleague said his wife would go there at around three in the morning too, and I have some other acquaintances that go there every year too. alife has the biggest Halloween party in Sapporo, I think. This year I am told over 1000 people attended. This means the place is way too crowded, and you cannot move. In some corridors, you were pushed around and just flowed with the stream while being in a lot of pain, which was unpleasant. They should let in less people, I think. Even if that had meant me waiting outside another half hour.

Waiting in the rain.

When standing in the rain outside, waiting to get in, I was asked to show some ID. People under 20, or whatever age limit they might have had, are not allowed in, apparently. Since I am 37, I was a bit surprised to be asked to show some ID, but since my face was covered in paint and blood, I guess it is best to make sure. I also met a guy I know, who keeps running into me when I look weird in strange locations.

Once inside, I was stuck behind a group of 10 or so girls dressed as "sexy policewomen zombies". They thought my face was amazing, and asked to take some photos with me, so we blocked the whole entrance for a few minutes... They were more sexy and cute than they were zombies, but they did all have scar tissue and blood on their cheeks.

My zombie friends, with their two devil friends.

After leaving the zombie police girl group, I immediately ran into my friends from the previous party. They were heading to a different part of the club since the dance floor was too crowded. I took a quick look around by myself to see if there were any other people there that I knew, and to see what other costumes people were wearing.

Avatar, with a full body blue suit, including a tail.

There were a lot of "sexy police" and very very many Snowwhites. There were also quite a few "sexy Mario". This was a bit surprising to me, since the Mario character is not something I would think of as "sexy". There were also many French maid costumes, and a lot of zombies.

This gorilla suit must have been unbelievably hot.

Some people had very impressive costumes. Many people also came up to me and asked if they could take a picture with me (which of course they could), so I guess there are many tens of photos of me floating around Twitter and Facebook that I will never see.

A Canadian with fake breasts.

When I later found my friends again, they had also found a Canadian guy now working for Apple in Tokyo. He had bought fake breasts in Akihabara that he said had a very realistic feel to them. Everyone was invited to touch them, and the girls kept touching his fake breasts for about 10 minutes or so. They were very impressed with how real they felt.

Not Swedish vodka.

This guy also thought everyone should do tequila shots, which they did when I was away. He thought I should by lots of tequila too, but I said that in Sweden we drink vodka. In the end, we ended up having vodka shots instead (though it was not Swedish vodka).

My blurry photo of another friend.

I spotted another friend far away, and went looking for her to say hello. I met her outside alife last Halloween too (when I was walking home from work). I found her and took a picture (which ended up very blurry) again, and we also later ran into each other at Bottom Cafe, where we both went after the alife party was over. Two years ago, she was dressed as a very impressive Hatsune Mike, and I was dressed in a blond wig and a fake "foreigner nose" to look like a foreigner. That was a good year.

Later, I ran into two girls who took one photo each together with me, and then gave me Halloween chocolate.

I also had a guy come up to me and give me a glowing bracelet. I put it inside my blood drenched shirt, and it looked a bit like the glowing thing Iron Man has.

I was also arrested and handcuffed by the zombie police. Who turned out to have misplaced her keys for the cuffs! But it turned out you could get out of the cuffs without keys.

There were apparently some scheduled events during the party. Like a costume competition with huge sums of money as prizes. I would have liked to enter, but had no idea there was a contest. My friends told me they had seen some "sexy male dancers" performing. The only thing I saw was a group of female dancers dancing on a small stage for a few songs. They looked like accident victims and nurses, and (probably) belonged to the "Party Dolls" group.

After I left, I got home at around 6 in the morning. Then it took about 40 minutes to get the paint and blood off. After checking e-mails, answering work related things, etc. it was around 7 when I finally got to bed. At 10:27, the fire alarm of our building told me that: "There is a fire. Calmly run for your life!" So I got up and tried to calmly run for my life, while grabbing some clothes and my passport etc. When I reached the sixth floor (I live on the ninth) some people were coming back up and they told me it was a false alarm. Which was good, but my sleep was completely ruined and I spent the rest of the day in a zombie like state.

Some zombies that wanted to take a photo with me.

I liked this "the Joker" guy.

This guy had a zipper on his face, similar to me one year ago.

The DJs where also in costume. I liked the Mario (not aiming for a "sexy Mario" but for an actual Mario Mario).