Venue: Shizuoka, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan When: Nov 2nd - Nov 5th 2017,  10:00am - 5:00pm

From Thursday 2nd November 2017 to Sunday 5th, the annual Daidogei World Cup will be held in Shizuoka City. At dozens of stages all around the city, you'll be able to watch street performers of every kind: clowns, acrobats, jugglers, aerialists and more, both Japanese and international.

 

I've been a couple of times in the past, and it's always a tremendously fun event. Shizuoka is a pretty compact place so it's easy to walk between the stages, and part of the fun is walking round a corner and finding a new act doing their thing.

 

Other than at the Premium Stage in Sunpu Castle Park, all the shows are free to watch, though the right thing to do is to put some money in the hat that gets passed round afterwards. I also think that the appeal of street performance is the closeness between performer and audience, which is lost in a big venue.

 

As well as the shows, there are food stands and a beer garden in the park, face painting booths, and clowns and stilt-walkers roaming the streets. I'm already looking forward to it!