Tenyo 2012, first impression ・ テンヨー2012年新作

Today I went to Tokyu Hands to buy some of the magic prop maker Tenyo's new items for 2012. There are five new items for 2012 that I know of, and all were available. I bought the three that interested me most.

今日東急ハンズに行って、手品道具のメーカーのテンヨーの2012年の新作品を色々買った。新しいものが5つあるんだ。ハンズに全部あった。その中の一番気になっていた3つを買った。

I bought the flying carpet, the third eye, and the dice tower (by the way, I am just guessing what the names might be in English, since I have the Japanese version with all instructions/box texts/etc. only in Japanese). I also bought some Pikachu shaped sponges, which are also made by Tenyo. I already had a bunch of those, but the Pikachu are really cute and very popular with children here. You can never have too many, I guess.

「魔法のじゅうたん」・「ザ・サード・アイ」・「タワー・オブ・ダイス」を買った、他にもピカチュのスポンジも買った。それもテンヨーのものだが新しくはない。何個も持っているが可愛いし、子供うけが凄くいいし、沢山買った方がいいかも。

On the way out of the store I ran into a couple where the man said "Ah, the magician!" and pointed at me. The woman said "A magician?", so I guess he has been to our magic bar (he looked familiar) but she has not. He also said, "From Sweden!". I said yes, and that I had just bought a huge bag of magic props so his timing was great. They evidently found that amusing and laughed a lot.

店から出た瞬間、日本人のカップルに見られた。男の方が「あ、マジシャンだ」と言いだした。女の方が「マジシャン？」って。彼が多分うちのマジックバーに来たことあると思う（顔は覚えている）が彼女がそうでもないだろう。彼が「スウェーデンから！」と言ったから、「はい、そうです」と返して、「今手品道具を沢山買ったばかりなので、凄いタイミングでしたね！」と言ったら、2人とも凄い笑ってくれた。

The Flying Carpet・魔法のじゅうたん

The flying carpet is very nice. It consists of a black cloth to put on the floor, a black "landing pad" thingy to put on the black cloth, a bunch of blue stickers that you have to stick to the landing pad, a flying carpet (actually a plastic sheet), two pairs of 3D glasses, and a paper thingy that you will use for comparison so people can see how high you are "flying". This is an optical illusion and everyone will probably realize that that is what it is. It is a great optical illusion though! You stand on the flying carpet, which is placed on the landing pad (which in turn is on the black cloth) and one or two spectators stand about two meters away wearing the glasses. You will seem to be flying, higher than the 10 cm high paper thingy beside the landing pad. The can move around (left-right, move forward and backward) and what they see will be consistent with you and the carpet floating in the air. You can also move the landing pad you have under you which makes it look even more as if you are not standing on the ground. A very very nice optical illusion.

魔法のじゅうたんが好きだ。入っているものが：黒い布・黒のフライングベースみたいなもの・青いシール（ベースに貼る）・魔法のじゅうたん（プラスチック）・3Dメガネ2つ・浮いている高さ分かりやすくするための何かの紙。目の錯覚なんだ。誰でもすぐそう思う（多分）が結構凄い錯覚だ！黒の布の上にベースを置いて、ベースの上に魔法のじゅうたんも置く。自分がじゅうたんに乗って、お客さんが2メートルくらい離れて3Dメガネを掛けると本当に浮いているように見える。10センチくらいの高さの比較のためのものより高く浮いているように見える。お客さんが左右・前後動いてもまだ浮いている感じ。フライングベースをじゅうたんから抜いても大丈夫なので、それでも本当に浮いているって印象になる。素晴らしい錯覚だ。

There is also a clip of this illusion being used in a bar in Japan on YouTube:
魔法のじゅうたんの動画がユーチューブにもある：

The Dice Tower・タワーオブダイス

The tower of dice looks like a holder with room for 4 dice and a lid for this. You take off the lid, pour out the dice, and stack them neatly on the table. You then put the lid to one side, and show that the original holder fits exactly over the stack of dice, with (apparently) no room for any more by putting the holder on the stack. When you put the holder over the dice stack a second time, the dice stack grows to 8 dice (a twice as high stack), and the spectators can check that these are real dice. After one clean up move, you can also hand the holder and lid to the spectators. This trick looks great in the Tenyo YouTube video, and the gimmick was not what I had imagined. My first impression is: it felt a little inconvenient holding things the way you are supposed and getting rid of the one secret thing you cannot show to the spectators may be a little tricky in some situations. But with a little practice, this should not be very difficult to perform, I think. Your angles are fairly good.

これがダイス4個の入れ物と入れ物の蓋に見える。蓋を取って、ダイスを出して、テーブルの上でダイスのタワーをたてる。蓋はもう使わない。ダイスのタワーに入れ物をかぶせて、入れ物とダイスのタワーがちょうど同じ大きさだと示す。もう一回かぶせたら、入れ物をタワーから取る時にタワーがダイス8個のもっともっと高いタワーになる。お客さんにダイスを調べて貰っても大丈夫だ（普通なダイスだ）。ちょっとした何かしてから、入れ物と蓋も手渡しできる。ユーチューブの動画で凄くきれいに見える。ギミックは僕が思ったのと違うんだ。最初の印象では、ちょっとおかしい持ち方しないと行けないとギミックの処理がある状況でちょっと大変かもしれないと思った。だが、ちょっろ練習したら、使えそうだ。角度に結構強い。

The Third Eye・ザサードアイ

The third eye seemed like it could be used to have quite a lot of fun together with the spectators in the demo video I had seen. The secret was not exactly what I had guessed, but I was pretty close. You get a plastic eye that blinks with a red light when you turn it on (it is battery powered and you can change the battery once it runs out), three sets of five cards each, and a display stand that you can place the cards in. The basic idea is that you have a spectator select one card out of five and then return this to the stack. These five cards are placed in the display stand and any spectator can immediately see which the chosen card is just by looking at the backs of the cards if they have the third eye placed between their normal eyes. Other spectators will not be able to see it.

動画を観て、ザ・サード・アイが結構面白いように使えると思った。タネは僕が思ったのとちょっと違ったがまあまああっていた。入っているものは：プラスチックの目、スイッチをOnにしたら赤いランプが光る（電池交換可能）・5枚のカードが3セット・5枚が入るディスプレーのもの。基本の手順はお客さんに5枚のカードから一枚選んで貰って、また選んだカードを戻して貰う。5枚をちょっと混ぜて、ディスプレーに入れる。別のお客さんがカードを当てる。サード・アイを自分の目の間に付けると誰でも、カードの裏を見ながら、選んだカードすぐ分かる。サード・アイを付けていない人には見えない。

You have three sets of cards to use, one which has five cards from a normal deck of cards, one that has "how much do you like me/someone else we are talking about" on a scale from 0 to 100%, and one that has love/money/fame/career/something else that I don't remember. You could use cards that you make yourself by reusing a few secret parts from the cards provided, I guess. Though these cards would still have to look a bit suspicious to work. It seems to be fairly easy to reuse the secret parts you would need.

カードが3種類ある。普通なトランプ5枚・「興味ない」「友達でいい」「ちょっといいかも」「大好き」「愛している」的な5枚・「お金」「愛」「仕事」「有名」などの5枚。その15枚から仕掛けを取って、自分で持っているカードに付けるのもまあまあ簡単だと思うがどうしても裏からちょっと怪しく見えないとこのマジック出来ない。

The dirty work you have to do as the magician is easy. There are several ways you could do what needs to be done, and anyone could learn several of these with minimal practice. The angles are very good, though you probably do not want the spectators to look at the faces of  the cards in the display stand. The spectator with the third eye will have to be more or less right in front of the cards when he is looking at them (the angles where the third eye work are a bit restricted) but has very generous angles from which to watch the cards, and you can just turn the display to face the spectator in extreme cases and the angles are forgiving enough so that it is very easy not difficult to get the spectator to see what needs to be seen.  Other spectators can be fairly close to the one with the third eye and still not see which is the selected card. Placing their eyes very close to the first spectators eyes would make them see it, though.

マジシャンがやっていることが全部簡単だ。色々なやり方でこのマジックに必要なことが出来る。誰でもちょっとだけ練習したら、簡単なやり方が出来ると思う。角度に強い。ディスプレーする時にカードの表がお客さんに見えたら良くないがそれ以外はセーフだ。サード・アイを付けている人がカードの裏を真正面くらいから見ないと色々な角度から見ても選んだカード分からないが分かりやすいし、ディスプレーをお客さんに合わせるのが簡単だから問題ない。サード・アイで分かる角度がまあまあかなり優しいから、お客さんがちゃんと分かるようにするのが難しくない。他のお客さんがサード･アイのお客さんの結構近くに来ても選んだカード分からないがお客さん同士の目が凄く近ければ、2人とも分かる。

All in all, this seems like it could be quite a lot of fun to use.

全体的な印象は、面白そうだ！使いたい。

The Other Two Items・買っていないもの

Apart from the three things above that I bought, Tenyo also produced two other items. One is an envelope that contains a folded paper that when unfolded turns out to contain a pop-out picture with a pop-out basket. You can the produce a small ball or other small item from this basket, despite the folded card originally being inside the flat envelope. This looks quite nice, but the method seemed completely obvious to me when I saw the demo clip on YouTube, so I think I will build my own instead.

買った3つのもの以外、他にも新しいもの2つあった。封筒の中に折ったカードがあって、カードを開くとポップ・アウトの箱が出てくる。カードがフラットな封筒の中に入っていたのに、マジシャンがボール（や小さなものの何でも）カードに付いている箱から出せる。見た目がきれいだし、現象が面白いと思うし、いいものだと思うがやり方とかすぐ分かった（と思う）。自分で作ってみようと今考えているから買わない。

The last item is a pen on which you can make bills of money rotate. It did not seem like a very interesting effect to me, so I will pass on this one I think. Unless a friend who will buy all of them manages to convince me that it is good :-)

最後のものはペンの上に札を置いて、札が回る。そこまで面白い現象ではないと思ったから、買わない。まぁ、全部買う友達1人がいるから彼に「面白いよ」と言われたら買うかも。