Oiran parade and Susukino Festival 2015

Back in August there was the yearly Susukino Festival. They close off the streets in the entertainment district from 18 to 22 during three days, and instead of having lots of taxis blocking the streets you have lots of tables serving not very good food and cheap drinks. Our magic bar had a stand together with a yakitori place that has very good food.

You run into lots of friends in the Susukino festival

The first day of the Susukino festival has an "Oiran parade". Two girls (usually from the hostess clubs in Susukino) have to practice how to walk around dressed like an oiran. This involves wearing many layers of kimono and carrying a very long kimono belt that weights several kilos. There are also lots of other people in the parade, since an oiran would not walk around alone, I guess.

The oiran in orange

Oiran in purple

Oiran wear very high geta (Japanese clogs) that are very difficult to walk in. They also have to walk in a certain complicated style.

This year it only rained on day out of three, so financially I guess the Susukino festival this year was more successful than usual (it usually rains like crazy for at least two days). We had a pretty good spot, but a very small area.

It rained a little the first day, but some people still stayed.

I usually show up in yukata for Japanese festivals (you have to use every opportunity to wear a yukata, since there are so few of them). This makes doing any actual work hard, though. It is also a pain doing magic wearing a yukata. But doing magic at the Susukino festival sucks anyway, so I figured why not?

Some reasons for disliking doing magic at the Susukino festival includes rain (ruins anything made of paper, like a deck of cards), strong winds (blows away cards, sponges, threads, paper money, anything light), no space to stand (very very crowded), people being completely unfocused (people they know pass nearby and start talking to their friends all the time), and much more. People are usually very happy and enjoy the magic, though.

Students from my university dancing in the street

There are other entertainments during the festival too. There is a yosakoi (team dancing) competition, and the team from my university was there of course. There are also karaoke competitions and musical performances. There are mobile temples being carried around too.

This kid wanted to see "one more magic trick" for 5 hours, haha.

Doing magic to the son of a friend who went to the trick art museum with me in Tokyo.

New yukata on day two

Two people I kind of know

In Susukino, you meet a lot of people that you know when everyone is drinking in the street. Normally everyone is hidden away in the hundreds of small bars here. I walked past a table where two guys who are so into fishing that they looked up information on the Internet and then found their way to a bar I often go to just because a "famous fishing expert" they follow on Facebook mentioned he was there drinking. They recognized me from the one time we met in the bar, and bought me drinks and food in the festival. They were drinking with one of the transvestite dancers from LaLaToo, our famous transvestite show club.

Tourists from Taiwan (?) with a selfie stick

My blond friend and his colleagues passed by

Mobile temples carried by thirty people trying to pass through the crowds.

The people I buy my cameras from stopped by our place, and then continued on to our bar!

I spent a ridiculous amount of time barfing cards out of my mouth to try to get passersby interested in our little stand

Yet another yukata on day three

Marmite and chance meetings at One Star Bar

After the El Mango party I stopped by a bar where one of my friends works. He asked me if I was hungry, which I was not (the El Mango party had lots of very good food). He was insistent, though. It turned out that he had some guydon (rice with thin slices of beef) from Yoshinoya (famous for having extremely cheap guydon) that he had started eating but could not finish, so he wanted to get rid of the leftovers.

Me, two years ago

One of the other guys working there decided to try some marmite that I had brought from Oxford. They had tried it before and decided that it tastes horrible. He tried it with the guydon, to see if that would be good. It was horrible.

Guydon, lots and lots of rice, and trace amount of beef

Later, a woman came to the bar and mentioned that she had probably met me before. She showed me a photo she had in her phone of someone with a bloody face and a zipper glued to the face. It was me, of course. We had apparently met two years ago in a different bar.

Marmite, does not go well with guydon (or anything else, really)

Ghostly magic show at El Mango Christmas Party

I did a magic show at the salsa club El Mango again. I was there for Halloween, and I was there in November. As this was the third time in only three months, I was running out of new material. I can do hours and hours of table magic, but I do not do that much stage magic so my choice of magic that goes over well is more limited. I ended up doing stuff that I had never performed before for about half the show this time, which is always a bit nervous.

Apart from my magic there was also food. Lots and lots of free food. Very nice food.

Winner of the costume competition

There was a guy wearing a shirt that said 下ネタ王子 ("the prince of dirty talk") who was presented to me as "here is a guy who just like you wears clothes that normal people would never wear". The girl in the angel outfit came second in the costume competition.

There was also a costume competition. I was asked to show up in costume and decided to use my wig from Halloween with my ghost costume from O-Bon. My costume was popular, but I did not win any prize. They mentioned the three top costumes in the competition, but mine was not among them. All the top three candidates were girls in short skirts. Neither was the girl in a short skirt I thought looked best, though.

Stunt fighting

Break dance

More break dance

Rock band

People almost storming the stage during the band's performance

There were also lots of other performances. The stunt fighting group One-Ones was there, a rock band was there, and a break dancing group was there. They were all good.

Multiple participant janken (rock-paper-scissors) game

Rock-Paper-Scissors winner

There were some games, like a janken (rock-paper-scissors) game where the winner got a very nice present.

Passing presents in a ring

I first got something that looked like a PET bottle with tea, but the game started again and I passed this along

There was also "present exchange". This is common in Japanese Christmas parties. Everyone brings a gift, and you stand in a ring passing your gift to the person next to you, and receiving a gift from the person on the other side of you. After some time, this procedure ends and you get to keep whatever gift you are holding at that time.

I finally got Swedish marshmallows

This was the present that I brought

I received a bag of Swedish marshmallows. This is quite unexpected considering this is Japan. Two of my Swedish friends who were here visiting Sapporo also came to the party and I ended up with one of the presents they had brought.