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.

Bad choice of footwear

Since I was going to dress up as a Japanese ghost, I wore a kimono (with the "wrong" side in front, like dead people are dressed). Japanese ghosts do not have feet, or at least do not show their feet, but since my kimono is too short to hide my feet properly I figured I should wear some traditional Japanese footwear, and put on a pair of setta.

This turned out to be a horrible idea. If it is cold outside and you walk on top of snow or ice, it is not so bad to wear sandals. On this night, it was too warm, around 2 degrees Celsius, so the snow was melting. I walked on roads covered in barely melted water and loose melting show (that you wade through rather than walk on top of). This meant that my feet were completely soaked and very cold immediately. I arrived at the Christmas party with my feet in a color quite close to Christmas red. Not very pleasant.

Home delivery guy meets ghost

As I was preparing for my magic show by dressing up as a ghost (I was asked to show up in a costume, since "it is a Christmas party" and Japanese Christmas is a bit different from Swedish Christmas), a package with stuff I had ordered from a Web shop arrived. Luckily (or sadly) I had not gotten very far in my in my transformation into a Japanese ghost, so they delivery guy did not react in any noticeable way when I opened the door.

Free doughnuts and Yuki-chan

Recently, the mama at the magic snack bar Ropossa has kept mentioning a "Yuki-chan" to me. She tagged me on Facebook saying: "Jonas, I went to your magic bar with Yuki-chan but you were not there". Other times there were messages like: "Yuki-chan is here again", or messages about Yuki-chan's father. 

The thing is, I have no idea who Yuki is. I saw a photo of her on Facebook, and still had no idea. So one day there arrived a message to me that said: "Yuki-chan is here now!", and I figured this meant they wanted me to come and say hello too. And I could finally learn who this person they keep mentioning to me is.

Photo of me taken by Yuki-chan's father

I ran over to Ropossa and met a guy I know a little (from playing Japanese card games with him at Ropossa several times) who had brought two huge bags of doughnuts. I had already had dinner so I declined all food suggestions from the Ropossa staff, but ended up with a fairly large bag of doughnuts to eat.

Photo of me taken by Yuki-chan's father

Anyway, I also met the young girl nicknamed Yuki. It turns out that we had never met before, so I am still not sure why they kept talking about her to me. Or, we had never talked to each other before, but when I was dressed as a ghost for the O-Bon dance, she and her father saw me (they were there watching the costume competition). He father asked me if he could take some photos of me, and I of course said yes. So I have met her father, and she was nearby at the time. 

Photo of me taken by Yuki-chan's father

She also told her father that "I am sure that that guy is the foreigner that lives across the street from me". Indeed, she turned out to live just across the street from me, so she has seen me many times. I may have seen her, but since there are many Japanese people wandering around there, I have no specific memories of seeing her. After talking to her a bit more, she also turns out to be friends with a girl who is one of my "kohai" (person who worked in the same place as you or went to the same university lab as you etc. but entered later than you did) at the university.

Photo of me taken by Yuki-chan's father

The funniest thing with this Yuki-chan was the story about her visiting our magic bar. The magician who showed her magic does a trick where someone picks a card, return it to the deck, shuffle the deck, and then the magician picks five cards to use. After showing five cards to the spectators and giving the spectator the rest of the cards to hold on to, he guesses that the selected card was indeed one of the five cards he happened to pick. He then pretends to hold a card and says: "So this is the card, right?" And returns this invisible card to the deck that the spectator is holding on to. It then turns out that he now only has 4 cards himself (despite seemingly not having returned a card, since it was invisible). 

Me and Yuki-chan

When in our magic bar, it was the first time she ever saw magic performed live. When she saw this trick, she was stressed out and said: "I can't see the card!" in an excited voice and asked the mama from Ropossa: "Do you see the card?". She then said: "Yes, of course. You can't see it?" and everyone else followed along and pretended to see a card too. 

When we met in Ropossa, I was asked to do some magic to some people I had never met before that came later, so everyone kept asking "Yuki-chan, can you see this card?" and "You see 8 cards here, right?" and things like that. It is nice to have such pure people watch magic. And if you have people who are un-pure enough and quick thinking enough to help you strengthen the effect, that is even better :-)

A ghostly thank you

I passed by the used kimono shop where I bought the kimono that I ended up using when I dressed up as a ghost for O-Bon. I went inside and said thank you and showed the woman working there a photo of the result. She seemed to think it was funny.

Me on TV again: waiting at a traffic light

Some of my friends told me that I had been on TV. There was a program that showed things from the Bon-Odori costume competition, and even though I did not get a prize, I was featured in the program. They showed me dancing in front of the judges (below), and me waiting at a traffic light (above). I love it that they show a ghost just waiting for a green light, haha.

I did not have a chance to see this show myself. I do not have a TV, and it was broadcast when I was still at work. It would have been nice to know what they were talking about when they showed me. Did they say anything funny? The text overlay just says: "The tradition that people from outside Hokkaido do not know about; costume contests at the Bon-Odori."

Ghostly coincidence

I put up a photo on Facebook saying: "It is O-Bon, the season of ghosts!", with me as a ghost. One of my acquaintances later wrote a comment saying: "My mother just e-mailed me that she saw a superb ghost at the Bon-Odori and that she took a photo. She will show it to me tomorrow. What if that ghost is Jonas?"

I answered that of course it is me. There were no other ghosts there.

The next day, this acquaintance sent me the photo above, which is the photo her mother took. It does indeed look a lot like me. The mother had said: "When I took out my camera, he turned my way and stopped moving, so I could get a good photo!" That is the kind of service I provide, haha.

I remember a woman taking a photo of me in the middle of the dancing (which must be this photo). So I have apparently met my acquaintance's mother.

Returning to the living

When I finally got home, I was glad I had worn a t-shirt under the heavy kimono. It was too hot, but on the other hand lots of the syrup based blood had seeped through the thick layers of kimono, and if this gets stuck in your chest hair it hurts a lot after it has dried... It took me an hour or so to get rid of most of the paint, but sitting at work the next day I found several spots of where white skin (elbow, toes)...