Halloween at Afro Play

After having been photographed in the subway because I looked weird, I also went to Afro Play, a bar close to where I live. I know some of the people working there.

Someone I know!

When I got to the Halloween party it was already quite late, and since it was a Sunday not that many people where still partying. The people there were still having lots of fun, though.

Mario with a low resolution mustache!

I saw some nice costumes. I liked the Mario costume of a Japanese girl. She had a kind of fat suit (no Japanese girl is as fat as Mario) instead of looking like "sexy Mario" which was common on Saturday. She also had glasses and a mustache that were pixellated like low resolution graphics. I like that kind of attention to funny details.

An almost naked dancing guy, but his friend refused to soil my camera with the undressed parts, so I only have the mask, hat, and cape...

After putting on some clothes again.

I met some guys that talked to me about Sweden. One of them said that his name was Larsson (a common name in Sweden, but he meant it specifically as the soccer player Henrik Larsson) so I said my name was Ibrahimovich. That guy then undressed almost completely, and ran up on a (very) elevated stage and danced there for 10 minutes. One of the other guys bought me a drink (rum).

Free booze.

They later also asked (forced) me to play the game "otogi janken" with them. Janken is the Japanese rock-paper-scissors. Otogi means manliness. So this is "manly rock-paper-scissors". The goal is to try to win, and it is very manly to win because you have to do things you would not want to do unless you were very manly. Normally this means spending lots of money. This is common in funny TV-shows, where they gather male celebrities that have a "manly" image to defend, and then they go around to different places and do things like "who wants to pay for this meal for 20 at a super expensive restaurant?", and everyone has to say they want to pay. Since everyone wants to pay, they decide who gets to pay buy playing rock-paper-scissors. The winner then pays 500,000 yen or whatever the bill they rack up ends up being.

I am fairly sure I have met this girl before, in a different bar, but she did not recognize me. Then again, I did not wear make-up at that time.

In my case, I am apparently super manly because I defeated everyone in the first round of rock-paper-scissors. Usually you have to do several rounds before things are decided when you play Japanese rock-paper-scissors with many players, but I was so strong it ended immediately. I then had to drink a glass of some strong alcohol that no one told me what it was. I also had to pay for all the drinks of all the girls at the counter. Luckily, it was so late that most people had left and it was actually quite cheap for me.

A guy with lots of blood on him, like I had the day before.

A toilet with a lot of blood on it (not my fault, and probably not real blood).

Cafe tout le Monde Halloween party

Creepy cake

I went to "Cafe Tout le Monde" and their Halloween party, which is a very nice place. I know the people that run the place, and at the Halloween party there was one more person that I knew too.

A book in Swedish

A Swedish Dalahäst

The party was very nice. There was lots of very good food, the price was cheap, and there were funny games and funny people. There were also Swedish things placed around the room, a Mumin book in Swedish (and another one in Finish) and a Dalahäst.

Death

There were games of charades, an impromptu salsa lesson, and other things. I was asked to do a short magic show, so I hammered a nail into my nose and determined which card had been selected by a girl dressed like Alice in Wonderland.

Random people from the streets

Other interesting things that happened included a group of weirdly dressed people suddenly coming into the cafe, taking out iPads and taking pictures together with some of us and then leaving. They were from a different Halloween party (of course).

The Momonga and Elmo

One girl was dressed in a Japanese "kigurumi" (roughly translates as "wearable stuffed animal", meaning a pajama like suit usually looking like Pikachu or some other animal or anime character). When asked what she was supposed to be, she claimed to be a bat. Everyone else kept calling her "momonga" (a flying squirrel). I think they were all wrong. She had a devil like tail, and as far as I know, neither bats nor flying squirrels have hooked tails like that. She looked more like the Night Fury in "How to train your dragon" to me, so I thought she was some Japanese cartoon monster like that.

MinnieGaGa, the Minnie Mouse and Lady GaGa crossover

After the party I left for the subway. I just missed my train, and since it was quite late I had to wait for a long time for the next train. So long that six other people from the party showed up, ready to take the same train. The reason they were so much later than me was that they had changed into normal clothes. They all thought I was a complete nut for going home without washing off the face paint.

They also said that "you meet a lot of strange [in a good way] people at Cafe tout le monde". There are lots of foreigners there, and that in itself is strange. But they said: "You meet a lot of weird people there, but you are number one" to me... I said that indeed many (of my few) friends tell me I am a weirdo. They said that they meant it more like "unique" than "barking mad", but I think they were mainly trying to be polite. And while they are not wrong (by the Japanese standard of what behavior is weird), I was a bit surprised that they thought so after just this party. I did not really do that much at the party, and I did not tell any of the stories of weird things I have done. Maybe it was the hammering a nail into my nose? Going to a Halloween party and looking weird is surely allowed, since it is a dress up party.

Chocolate Halloween Matryoshka

In the subway, some of the other people were going many stops in the same direction I went. Since they thought it was weird to ride the subway with a face like mine, they also took photos of me in the subway. And they were kind enough to explain to me that: "This girl that does not know us and that is laughing very much, she is laughing at you". Which I already knew, but still it was nice of them to explain such things.

Riding the subway, pretending not to notice people taking photos of me.

Not a zombie

Many of my friends, colleagues, vague acquaintances, and people who friended me on on Facebook keep complaining that dressing up as a zombie, while looking quite good, is already done and I should do something different. Some complain that their Facebook news feed consist almost solely of my zombie face, since they have no other friends that ever post anything and that they feel sick when they see that photo.

I wanted to try something new this year, but had no good ideas. I finally found some photos and video clips of people making their faces look like ceramic doll faces, with cracks. This looked good, but I feared that since I have no skills in the art department, it would not look that good when I did it.

Here is a link to a video where it looks good: broken doll make-up video.

I first tried it with my leftover white body paint, but the white paint kept flaking off when I added other colors. I gave up after 15 minutes or so and washed it off and tried a white grease paint crayon I had found in a 100 yen shop (a "dollar store"). This did not make the skin that white, but I figured it was close enough to be useful. Then I instead had problems with getting the black to stick. The black that looks really black did not stick on top of the grease paint, and using black grease paint just made everything grey.

Again, I washed all of it off (which was more difficult with the cheap grease paint). I tried the white body paint again, and using a paint brush to put on the other colors very lightly. It worked well enough, and since the party I planned to go to had by then almost started (and it was far away from where I live), I figured I would have to make do. The results look more like a clown, with weird black lines and spots on his face. Or her face? People kept telling me I looked like a girl.

I figured it was better than nothing and rushed to the subway. I rode five stops, including all the big stops in Sapporo, and got many weird looks. But since I am a foreigner, people often look at me anyway so I am used to it.

On my way home, some of the other people from the same party were going the same way. They all changed into "normal" clothes before leaving, and thought I was weird for riding the subway like that. They also took photos of me in the subway. And they were kind enough to explain to me that: "This girl that does not know us and that is laughing very much, she is laughing at you". Which I already knew, but still.

When I off the subway, I stopped by another Halloween party close to where I live too.

When I finally got home, I ended up riding the elevator together with a young Japanese woman. I asked her which floor she wanted, and she said that she lives in the apartment opposite mine. We have never met before, but I think she is not so much a stalker, she just figured that the blond person is probably the one living in the only apartment with Latin letters out of the 200 or so apartments in our building.

She also asked me: "So, you are from a place 'like that'?" (「そういう店ですか？」), with which I have no idea what she meant. I said that I had been to a Halloween party, and she said "Ah! I see." So apparently she had been thinking of something completely different.

Doll photos

Some people had brought dolls to photograph under the cherry trees.