My Halloween stalker

There is a girl who I first met because she often comes to our magic bar. Now, her friend is also married to one of my friends. I keep running into her when I am dressed as a zombie or something similar. And in weird places, not in our magic bar or some place like that.

Once, I was meeting another friend for Halloween and she was going to a party and I had to go work in our magic bar, so we just met to say hello and see the other's costume choice. When talking there, random people kept coming up to me and asking if they could take a photo of or with me. So when I was talking to some random office worker outside KFC, this Halloween stalker of mine also showed up. I have also met her in the corridor outside a karaoke place. I have met her outside the shared toilet in a building with 93 bars. I have met her in the Sapporo Art Forest park (although at that time I was there for the Star Wars exhibit and was not actually dressed weirdly, only wearing Star Wars clothes). I have also met her in our magic bar when working dressed as a zombie, but that is not surprising.

This time, I was packing up my stuff after my magic show and was about to leave the bar I had performed in when I noticed my Halloween stalker sitting at a table not far from the exit. She seemed surprised to see me.

Magic show at the H's Cafe Halloween party

H's Cafe (read "his cafe") is a bar in Sapporo that among other things serves great hamburgers. Possibly the best burgers in Sapporo. They also have Halloween parties. Last year I was asked to do a magic show at their Halloween party, and they were apparently happy with the show and asked me back this year too.

The whole place was decorated with fake spider web and strange paintings that looked scary from some angles and not so scary from others. H's Cafe has a fairly young (early twenties? I cannot really tell with Japanese people even when they have not painted their faces for Halloween) clientele, and the Halloween party was no exception. You had unlimited drinks for the duration of the party and you could get free hamburgers and chocolate too.

There was a costume competition, and anyone in costume got a number to stick to themselves somewhere and you could vote for two or three numbers to win the costume competition. The winners got a H's Cafe free pass, which means you can eat and drink for free during November, under the condition that you are there with at least one other person (who will have to pay for their food and drinks). This year I ended up in second place in the costume competition, but I did not have time to use the free pass (the university keeps me too busy).

Scary reflection in the red bull cooler

My magic show went well this year too. People laughed at the right times and were surprised at the right times. It is always a bit difficult for me to do magic in weird costumes. No pockets where you are used to having them. People cannot understand your facial expression. Things like that. After my magic show was finished, people I know showed up by change (they had no idea I was doing a show, I had no idea they ever visited this place).

A group of vampires, and me. The girl in blue (rightmost) won the costume competition.

Three guys dressed up as "people who forgot to dress up for Halloween"

I took a photo with this guy last year too (last year he won the costume competition)

Face paint starting to peel off

Dressing up

Back in Sapporo, I was asked to do a magic show at a Halloween party one week before Halloween. I had bought a t-shirt in Sweden that has a skin color print that makes you look like a girl, and I used this and a wig I bought but never used for my slit-mouthed-woman costume back in August.

I also added some torn pieces of skin that you could peel back. I had to get up really really early the next morning and fly to Tokyo, so I did not want to have a costume that would take too much time to get out of after the party was finished (sometime after midnight)

My Free Food winnings from Halloween paying off!

After drinking tequila all night, sleeping in the plane, going straight to work, working hard, I had a dinner meeting with my Sapporo colleagues. We often go out for hamburgers. This time they wanted to go to H's Cafe, that has excellent hamburgers. This was perfect for me, since I had won a "Free food all November"-card from H's Cafe at their Halloween party. So I got my hamburger and my drinks for free! Yay.

Kuchisake Onna meets Swedish speaking Marilyn Monroe and does magic at El Mango

I was asked to do a 10 to 15 minutes magic show at the El Mango Halloween party, in costume. I gladly accepted, and went there as Kuchisake Onna again. There were 6 performances in total, and some bonus performances from the MC. The party participants could then vote on the performance they thought was best, and on the costume they thought was best.

I did a short magic show on stage, where I did five of my normal tricks. Everyone seemed to enjoy the show, and many came up and said they were sure I would win the best performance prize (which I did not, it went to the stunt fighting performance team who deserved it).

A magic coloring book with the Disney "Frozen" characters

Me, Chun-Li, and a clown doing a magic trick with small rabbits

A card with a drawing made by some random audience member ended up inside an unopened PET-bottle.

I did a trick where the "perfect match" for a girl will be determined using a set of cards with pictures of Brad Pit (indicating "cool people" are a good match for her), Einstein ("intelligent" people are her type), Mr Bean ("annoying people") etc. The girl that night kept getting a card with a photo of me. This was a bit difficult to recognize, though, since I was not wearing a dress and wig in the photo. But everyone thought this was funny too.

The MC, dressed like "a pro-wrestler"

Stunt fighting performance

Stunt fighting performers

The performances were in order: a team doing Bachata dancing, a girl doing impressions (singing songs as if sung by famous people I have never heard of), me, then a short break and then a stunt fighting actions sequence (that won the best performance), a group of girls dancing like the Girls' Generation (Korean girl band), and a pair doing some advanced salsa dancing. Many people I spoke to at the party came too late and missed my show, so I partly blame these people for not voting for me in the "best performance" category, haha.

Girl I know who performed songs on stage

Girls I don't know, dancing like Girls' Generation

The guy presenting the performers and being funny during the times when people were not finished back stage was also a talented performer. He was very funny, and he also sang and played the guitar during some breaks.

I did meet some people I know at the party. The girl who sang on stage is a friend of mine, and lots of her friends came to see her (none of my friends came to see me...), and since I know some of them I had some friendly faces in the audience even before starting my show. I ran into the girl with the Chun-Li costume from the Bottom Cafe party, for instance.

At the party, there was only one room backstage for performers to prepare whatever they may have to prepare. I was backstage moving things around between different bags to get ready for my performance when one of the bachata dancers came in. She looked at me for a while and asked me: "You are actually a man, right?" and asked me to leave so she could change. I was more or less finished with my preparations, so even thought I was the next to go on stage, I gave her the room. She also asked me where I am from, and when I said Sweden she started speaking to me in Swedish! Not only that, she also speaks Swedish with a very strong dialect from the sought of Sweden. This was the most surprising thing to happen to me at the party.

She came out a few minutes later dressed as Marilyn Monroe. I went back into the room to hide the last magic props on myself before the performance, but we talked a bit more later. She went to a Swedish high school in the south of Sweden for one year almost exactly 20 years ago. We also turned out to be born the same year (though she of course looks much younger than I do when neither of us are in costume). And she works at my university... So we met in the school cafeteria for lunch the week after the party.

At the end of the party, the prizes were announces. I won the best costume prize, and received a massage pillow. A drunk guy who had won lots of decks of cards with the Funashi character by playing crane games also gave me a deck of cards after I did a few magic tricks for him at the bar counter. There were not that many people that actually came to the party in costume. Most of the performers where in costume, but other than that there were very few. I took a photo with two girls dressed as a "sexy nurse" and as a "sexy cat French maid" that I used for some magic tricks during my show, though.

A girl who's drawing of a cat ended up in an unopened PET-bottle, and her nurse friend

Nakame Takkyu Lounge Halloween Party 2014

I often run into the guy who runs the bar (club?) called Nakame Takkyu Lounge in Sapporo, but I have never actually been to that place. He once suggested I come to their Halloween party and I said that if I had time I would  stop by. So I did.

Me and someone I know

Someone I possibly know (and the samurai in the foreground I know)

I met some people that I know, and I met some people that recognized me and claimed that we had met, though I could not recognize them that clearly under the heavy face paint, haha.

A guy I had a pretty long conversation with, and two of the costume prize winners

The guy who invited me

I also met lots of people I had never seen before, and many of them tried to talk to me. The loud music meant that it was a bit difficult for me to catch the Japanese of these conversations, but it went so-so at least.

People dancing to loud music

DJ I know who played loud music

I also spoke to a guy from Vietnam, who kept mixing English and Japanese when talking to me, and who was a bit drunk (he poured a lot of tequila all over my dress, for instance), so our conversations were a bit surreal and did not lead to much.

You could also have a professional makeup artist draw on your face for a fee. Some people had superb face paint! I was impressed by a girl who had a rabbit face, but I broke my own camera at the previous party so I did not get any good photos of her. I found a photo of her and me together, but it was only available in black-and-white.

Bottom Cafe Halloween Party 2014

Chun-Li and Kuchisake Onna

I stopped by Bottom Cafe after the magic show, and ran into lots of people that I know. Some of whom I had not met in years. They thought it was funny to see min in a dress.

Thomas the Tank Engine

I was impressed by a girl I know who had made a Chun-Li (from Street Fighter) costume from scratch. I also like the costumes that the guy who runs Bottom Cafe makes every year. He uses cardboard to make things like the Sapporo TV Tower, or this year Thomas the Tank Engine.

Cat ears and a funny eye mask

Kuchisake Onna does magic at Halloween party at Cafe An Be

My magician friend an colleague Tsubasa has a senpai who runs a cafe. They were having a Halloween party on October 31st, and Tsubasa had been asked to do some magic there. Since he has done magic there many times and was running out of new material, he asked me if we could do a show together. This year I wanted to do something for Halloween that was not a zombie but that was more Japanese. So I became the Japanese yokai (legendary creatures) kuchisake onna.

I met Tsubasa at the Cafe An Be, and we hung around there drinking and eating before it was time for us to go on stage. Before us, there was a very nice band that played catchy cover versions of famous songs.

When Tsubasa first told me about this party, he had the impression that it would be late at night and mainly for grownups. In fact, it turned out to be mostly families with children there. That meant that my scary makeup was not that great. Most kids ran away from me when I approached them, and no one wanted to help me on stage with cute rabbit tricks (normally lots of kids volunteer for that), so I ended up getting two parents on stage instead, haha. Tsubasa had prepared lots of below the belt type funny magic tricks, which he also mostly scrapped after seeing what the audience was like.

In the end, we had lots of fun, and the audience seemed to have fun too. They laughed at the right times, and they were astounded by strange things we did.

Me and Tsubasa running into one of my friends in the subway

We took the subway back to the city center together, and when changing subway lines at Odori station a woman came up to me and said: "Jonas?" She is one of the people I have known the longest in Sapporo and she said she recognized me immediately. She also recognized what I was supposed to be, which lots of young Japanese did not (people under 30 apparently do not know of the kuchisake onna). She thought it was weird of me to ride the subway dressed the way I was.

Riding the subway