Eccentric clothing

People tell me I dress strangely, but compared to this ordinary looking Japanese man I think I do not stick out that much, right?

Cool uniforms in the escalator

In Japan, people think I dress weirdly. I see lots of people that I think dress strangely too, though. These two girls had very cool uniforms, and seemed to be out shopping.

A Japanese wedding again

I was invited to another summer wedding, this time one of my magician friends. I also knew the bride from her coming to our magic bar quite often before they started dating.

The wedding was held up in the mountains on the outskirts of the city, so there was a free bus service provided. While waiting around for the bus, I ran into some other people that looked suspiciously like they were also going to the same wedding. They thought my t-shirt was weird for going to a wedding. It says 「ある意味神」 which translates roughly as "In some sense, a God". Since I planned to button my shirt and put on a jacket when we arrived at the wedding, I figured any t-shirt would be fine, but they still took photos of me and put them on Facebook.

At the wedding I met lots of people I had not seen in a long time, which was fun. There was lots of really good food too.

A friend who just barely fit into the suit he wore at his own wedding one year ago was teased by the master of ceremonies throughout the whole party for having "very tight pants".

Parts of the party were outside, so people sprayed themselves with bug spray in huge amounts.

When it was time for the main dinner, I went looking for my assigned seat. I first looked around where everyone else from our magic bar was sitting, but my name was not there. Not at the table for staff from the bar nor from customers of the bar. Since I know the bride too, I checked at the table for friends of the bride and the table for friends of the groom too, but no luck. Finally I found my name on the table for "Family of the groom"... So I ended up sitting with the father, mother, uncle, and brother of the groom. I had met the mother once in an elevator, but the rest of them were new to me. They looked at me with some suspicion (them being fairly sure I am not one of their relatives), but I pointed to the card on the table with my name. My friends keep springing weird surprises on me at their weddings...

My seating arrangements were a bit surprising

The people I sat with

The cake was decorated by the guests

The bride

The groom

People I know

Groom and me

At Japanese weddings, some people send video messages if they cannot attend. This time there was a message from a guy who came to our magic bar quite a lot when he lived in Sapporo. He had also managed to get the famous (on TV in Japan) magician Akira Fujii to participate in the message, which was pretty surprising.

Cake cutting and giving your significant other a piece of cake is always important at Japanese weddings. This time they also got to "feed" one friend of their choice.

Cutting the cake

The "first bite"

The "really big bite"

Feeding a guest of your choice

"Feeding" one more guest

There was a large selection of meats grilled before your eyes

These tomatoes were excellent

Cheese was melted on the spot for you

One of our regulars from the magic bar recently ate a lot of tomatoes on a trip to Hong Kong, so people kept bringing him tomatoes at the wedding too.

After the first big dinner was over, everyone relocated to our magic bar and there were a few more hours of partying. I ended up mainly working; making drinks, washing the dishes, doing magic, etc. It was still pretty nice, since the old team that I used to work with were all there and we worked together again/

No rest for the wicked

UFO in the streets

Sometimes you see people dressed as aliens handing out religious pamphlets in the streets here. Usually it is the Raelians. You can get the Raelian faith described in manga form from them.

Other than the Raelians, you also often run into mormons (usually two foreigners in suits and bicycle helmets) and from time to time Jehova's Witnesses.

Swedish shirts, magical phones, and exploding glass bottles

Some time ago, a guy came to our magic bar wearing a shirt that that said "Sweden". He likes Sweden because of sports, he said.

There was also a girl there who claimed to not do magic but who had a very magician looking cell phone decoration...

During this evening, I needed a new bottle of soda water for some cocktail I was making and one of my colleagues was putting bottles of soda into the refrigerator since all the bottles there had been used up by this time. He stretched out his hand that had two bottles towards me and I thought "great, he is giving me one of these two bottles since I need soda". Turns out he was thinking "here, take these two bottles of soda and I will go get more". So I grabbed one and he released both.

The glass bottle fell very cleanly and landed standing on the floor but the glass broke any way and things went flying everywhere. Soda is not so bad to get on your clothes so that was fine. I noticed later that I had several small cuts on my face from glass passing a bit too close for comfort, though. Since the cuts were very fine, there was not that much blood. And when I got around to take a photo, someone had wiped off most of the blood but if you look really carefully there is a small speck of blood left near the center of the photo, haha.

Weird people in Japan

The new style eye wear my friend uses.

Girly socks for free

Yesterday I bought some things at 7-Eleven and if you bought stuff for more than some amount of yen, you got to draw one lottery ticket. I won a pair of really tiny socks for women. Great. I am sure these will be very useful to me.

Not a dog

I noticed a store selling t-shirts with English text and illustrations not illustrating what was written. There was for instance a shirt that said "dog" and had a picture of a snake. And a shirt that said "sushi" but had a picture of Japanese curry. I assume they are being funny on purpose, but it was still a bit weird, haha.

Samba, Not Professional Wrestling, Juggling, and more

On Sunday I woke up late since I had been in our magic bar until past 6 in the morning. When I woke up my phone had several messages for me. One of them said: "Do you want to have lunch wearing a yukata today?"

Amateur "Professional Wrestling", which becomes a weird name

Since it was already past lunch time I said that I had planned to go to the 4 Bangai Festival and see some friends perform, but that I might as well go there in yukata. My friend said that she would also go in a yukata then.

Omikoshi with a kid riding on it

When we watched one of my friends performing, there was a professional cameraman taking photos. He might have been working for the festival, or perhaps a newspaper. He took photos of the performance, but also of the audience. He had a huge camera pointing at me and my friend for a long time. Perhaps because we were in yukatas and almost no one else was. Anyway, I kept doing "ohh!" and "wow!" faces, and my friend later said she also noticed him and did the same, so he should have got a few good photos.

Hanaeda the juggler

My friend wanted to go see the body builder exhibition, so I watched some of the juggling by myself while she looked at almost naked men. She came back and said that that was great.

Juggler Yu-ki

Yu-ki falling

Yu-ki not falling

My friend also noticed that there was a "Samba dancing" point in the program, so we went over to watch that too. My friend also dances and the first time we met she was part of a dance performance at an event where I was doing a magic show.

The samba group was great. They had very colorful costumes. My friend spoke to one of them (who she knew, I think) afterwards, and they said that they would walk home dressed like this, since there was no place nearby where they could change clothes...

Photogenic?