The Balloon Man

After a bit of shopping in Shibuya (there's a huge music store and we spent over $100 on CDs today - and I don't even remember the last time I bought a CD!), we decided to go for a leisurely stroll through Yoyogi park. While we were there, there was a guy making balloon animals (Balloon Moto), and he was starting to get a bit of a crowd, so we decided to stop and watch.

It was some standard stuff - Japanese TV show characters (you can see Doraemon on top of his sign), swords, love hearts, though he also made a balloon spring onion, which I thought was funny. He had a small segment where he seemed to pick the foreigners out of the crowd, and MrFodder got chosen (he called him MrJones, which I thought was hilarious). He handed them each one of the balloons, and challenge them to blow the balloon up. All while blowing the balloons himself and making more animals.

None of the people were able to blow the balloon up (despite all the time I spent learning to make balloon animals in year 12, I wasn't able to either, as I had always used a pump). He then took all the balloons back, and added another one, and blew up four balloons at once!

We weren't really able to understand all of what he was saying, as it was mostly in Japanese, but he started doing what looked like a sword swallowing act, except with a balloon, and that was pretty amazing. It's a bit eerie to watch, but what he did afterwards with another balloon was pretty funny - I know that sounds really clickbaity, but I don't want to spoil it.

I'll upload the video when I get home, as I can't sign into my YouTube account at the moment.

His entire show was really funny though - here's his website (in Japanese), I'd love to see him again.

We also happened to stumble across Kohachu, the "first real Pokemon Go in Japan".

He said things other than Kohachu, but his way of saying thanks was "arigachu".