Still the same as back then

I’m getting ready for JJF2026, which starts this weekend.

JJF is the largest juggling festival in Japan, bringing jugglers together from all over the country once a year.

Among all those jugglers, where do my props stand?

It is an important place for me to find that out.

There is no real need to bring something different from usual, and yet every year I get greedy and throw myself into preparing something new.

Maybe I just want to show off.

But the fact that I prepare as if it were a once-a-year recital is, I suppose, simply the nature of a juggler. It makes me feel that I am taking part with the same excitement as the juggling-mad university students who come from all over Japan.

I first went to JJF in 2005, and twenty years on, I still turn up with the same nerves and the same eagerness.

Knowing that I am still the same juggling fool I was back then leaves me feeling a little hollow, and also happy.

Five days to go. I’ll keep preparing, so that anyone who stops by the booth leaves a little happier than they arrived.