One man hanami in Maruyama Koen

I took my bicycle to Maruyama Koen, a park where people do hanami (cherry blossom viewing) like crazy in Sapporo. The park was full of people having barbecues. This is, I am told, a local Hokkaido custom. In the rest of the country people just sit under the flowers and drink alcohol (and eat food they brought with them already cooked). In Sapporo you always have a barbecue under the cherry trees. In fact, in Hokkaido people also take "Do you want to go to the beach?" to mean "Do you want to have a barbecue, at the beach?". Which, again, I am told is weird to people from the rest of Japan too.

Most of the cherry blossoms were long gone when I got to the park, but the ume (plum trees) were looking nice. Some sakura (cherry blossoms) were still left too. Mainly in places with little sunlight.

I met one of my university friends in the park. He was there with his girlfriend. He asked me if I was there alone, and when I said "Yes" he said "Oh..." with a pitying look... I need to get some friends that can move around during the days (my friends work, so you can pretty much only meet them if you to their place of work).

A woman came up to me and said: "You are the guy with the "tettereeee!" magic trick, right?" Apparently she has been in our magic bar. And people tend to remember a trick where I keep saying "tettereee" (which is really annoying to Japanese people).

There were some festival style tents selling food on the temple grounds right next to the park, so I bought some "croissant tai-waffles". They were good.

There was a guy speeding around on something that looked like a cross between a Segway and a skateboard.

Surprise again

Since almost everything in Tokyo seemed to be closed this evening, I ended up back at magic bar Surprise again. A guy showed up with a huge box of doughnuts and shared them with everyone. He also had tiny tai-yaki waffles.

Other photos vaguely related to DaiDonDen

The Ferrari I was taken for a ride in showed up while the sun was still up.

Some people that I know doing some weird things.

"Pizza taste croissant tai-yaki"... a strange product description, but nice food.

There were lots of weird looking people moving around near the street performance areas.

The blessings of the north, and Seicomart

Rose hip ice cream

Outside the botanical gardens you can also see the old Hokkaido prefectural office, which is a brick building. Buildings made from brick are very rare in Japan, and this one is thus a common stop for tourist buses. We decided to walk past it since it was so close, and there turned out to be a small festival going on called "The blessings of the north".

Tai-yaki with Hokkaido flour, Hokkaido sweet beans, etc.

People from all over Hokkaido (the northernmost territory of Japan, but very far south compared to Sweden) were there showing Hokkaido grown food etc. I ended up talking to a nice old man who sold buckwheat tea. In Japan people eat a lot of soba noodles, which are made from buckwheat. This was something you could make tea from, and he gave me some tea to try (very good tea!). He also said you can sprinkle it on salads or other things, and sprinkled some on my rose hip ice cream. It was very good like that too, so I bought a bag from him. Very cheap.

Soba (buckwheat) tea/snack

My sister in law had seen some Japanese TV show where the owner of the Seico Mart chain of convenience stores (which are common in Hokkaido but is a chain almost exclusive to Hokkaido) wanted to take a look inside a Seico Mart too. Since there are lots of them all over the city, we walked a block or so to the south and found one. She looked around and was impressed that the quality of the lunch box food seemed better than other convenience stores. For most people living in Hokkaido, Seico Mart is not something you would expect tourists to be interested in, but there you go.

Sapporo Festival (Hokkaido Shrine Festival) 2014

Lots of people at the festival

Every year on June 14 to 16, there is the Hokkaido Shrine Festival (also called the Sapporo Festival). There are several activities going on, there is for instance usually a trained monkey show at the Hokkaido Shrine which is very funny.

Lots of people, and rain

Near my home, there is a huge festival area in the Nakajima Koen park. For Japanese festivals, it is common to wear yukata, so I put on one of my yukatas and went there to check out the entertainment and have some interesting festival food. Since it is close to my home, I went there every day during the three days of the festival, even though it was mostly raining.

No one wanted to wade through this short cut. Except me, because my geta (clogs) are super high so this was not problem for me.

I ran into some people I know (like my magician colleague's older sister and nephew), some people I do not know but have met (like the cute couple that had me as entertainer at their wedding at Sheraton Hotel one week before), and lots of people who just commented "Oh, a foreigner".

Some people braved the rain and rented row boats

I had too much food, but the food is good and some of it is difficult to find outside festivals. I also saw some interesting entertainment, including motorcycle tricks, a woman eating live insects, and a man stopping an electrical fan with his tongue.

 Food

Spicy miso paste on a cucumber on a stick

Gyoza dumplings with chicken skin instead of dumpling dough

Korean (?) dumpling

Croissant tai-yaki 

Weird clothes

This guy was just wandering around inside the festival area

This guy had a jacket that says: "Fuckers NYC"

 Freak show

This guy had a big needle through his cheeks with which he dragged have objects around

This girl ate live insects

This girl poured melted candle wax into her mouth and breathed fire

This guy threaded a chain in through his nose and out through his mouth and the lifted things

This guy ate dry ice and breathed smoke

This guy stopped an electric fan with his tongue

This guy took off his underwear and did things on a bed of nails

Motorcycle stunts

This guy rode a motorcycle on the walls of a small cylindrical arena, that shook alarmingly every time he passed close to your head.

He did stunts like standing up and not holding on to anything and grabbing money from the hands of spectators.

Sweet job

Happy birthday in English, "Jonas" in Japanese.

My birthday was a Saturday, so after dinner I went to our magic bar to perform magic. It was an extremely busy night! It started with a group of 20 coming when we open (and some smaller groups at the same time), which makes you really tired. Then it was pretty much completely full until 1 A.M. or so, and we even had to put people who did not know each other together at the same tables since we ran out of chairs... We had to turn 10 people away too (and on a normal "good" day, we get between 10 and 20 people total, from 20:00 to 05:00).

I did magic non-stop from start to 1 A.M. or so, then had a short respite but more customers showed up and I ended up performing until 3 A.M.

At around 1 when things were calming down a bit, a colleague brought out a cake that said "Happy birthday ヨーナス". But as soon as I blew out the candles, lots of customers showed up again, so we put the cake back in the refrigerator again...

Again, "happy birthday" with Latin letters and my name in Japanese... In our magic bar, if people ask for my name I usually reply "Jonas, as in the 'you' from Hokuyou-ginkou and the 'nasu' from nasubi". Japanese people often explain what Chinese characters they write their names with, since there are many possibilities for writing what is pronounced as the same name. I deliberately chose two words that people would not normally use to exemplify (the name of a bank and the word for eggplant), which sounds funny to Japanese people. So my colleague wanted the cake to say my name like that (洋茄子) but decided it would probably not be possible to get the cake shop people understand that over the phone, so we ended up with the usual ヨーナス. "Jonas" would have worked for me too, though :-)

Tai-yaki, my colleague eating a tai-yaki, and two of our favorite customers who brought tai yaki!

Some regulars that I had not seen in a very long time (since winter or spring) also showed up and they brought tai-yaki (basically waffles shaped like tai (a fish) and filled with sweet bean paste, custard, or something else) for us to eat.

All in all, a nice birthday.