スウェーデン生まれの札幌市民のマジシャンの「ヨーナス」で～す。直訳したら、名字は「湖山」になる。Jonasはヘブライ語の名前で、平和の象徴の「鳩」という意味だ。湖山・鳩と申します。週末にマジックバーツイスターという店でマジックを披露している。僕のマジックに関しての考えてることのブログだ。
Originally from Sweden, I now live in Sapporo (Japan). My name is Jonas, and my last name which seems to be unpronounceable to both Japanese speakers and English speakers, means Lake-Mountain. Jonas means "Dove". I do magic in the Magic Bar Twister in Sapporo during the weekends, and this is my blog about magic things.
This is the Tenyo Special Magic trick for 2014. If you buy three Tenyo products and send in the little stamps they come with, Tenyo sends you a free trick in their "plus one campaign", and this year the trick is an x-ray vision test kind of effect.
First you have the spectator shuffle the cards and you can sort them into black and red cards using your x-ray vision (looking only at the backs).
観客にカードを混ぜて貰ってから、透視を使って赤と黒のカードを分ける。
Next, the spectator can cut the (already more or less shuffled) cards and then deal the top three cards. Using your x-ray vision and a vision test helping patch (to cover one of your eyes), you can determine exactly which cards these are.
You can do it with more than three cards if you want to, and if you are a little bit clever you can do it with only two cards too. You can have spectators look at the backs of the cards for quite some time and they will (most likely) not notice anything. Taking a picture of the backs of the cards with a camera will usually make them look really suspicious, though, so making this movie took some effort.
This is Hiroshi Kato, the owner of our magic bar, doing a "coin to glass" magic trick with a twist (at the appropriately named magic bar "Twister"). A big surprise variation on a classic trick. He put it up on Facebook himself in his "Today' magic" series, but he asked me to put it on YouTube too, so here it is.
Here is a clip of me doing some magic with Tenyo sponge rabbits at New Years. I was visiting my brother and his wife who were in Saitama at her parents' place. One evening some friends of hers also showed up, and I was asked to do "the trick with the rabbits", haha. I also did some other magic, but this is the trick people like the most.
Other than the rabbits, I also hammered a nail into my nose to psychically detect what card had been picked, used a small iPhone accessory to find other cards, did a "perfect match" magic trick for one of the girls, and had a signed card end up inside an unopened PET-bottle.
My boss in our magic bars has recently begun putting up short clips of magic on his Facebook feed, calling them "Today's magic". This is a fun idea, and I have been asked to participate from time to time. I figure I might as well reuse the movies and put them on YouTube too. The first to clips starring me show me doing the baguette production and the Tenyo Ghost Cards. Two tricks that work extra well for the camera :-)
Since these are shot with someone's cell phone, the image quality is not that great, and it is very much not widescreen... But the magic is still pretty nice.
Today I noticed that one of the stores in Sapporo was selling the new Tenyo props. I was looking for Halloween stuff, but walked home with two new Tenyo tricks instead. I bought the "Magical MRI" and the "Ghost Cards". I considered buying the "4D printer" too, but I will buy that from a different store instead.
The Magical MRI has a very clever gimmick. The effect is that the spectator puts things on his side of a metal plate (so you cannot see them) and you manage to figure out what is on the other side. Two dice are included in the box, and you can have the spectator put one of them on his side, with whatever number he wants facing up, and you put the other one on your side showing the same number. The spectator can use both dice on his side, and you can write down what numbers he chose (or just tell him). Basically, you can see things on the other side, so you can have the spectator put other things there too, and an idea with a playing card is described in the instructional leaflet.
You can hand out the metal plate with no fear of anyone discovering anything incriminating. You can hand out the plastic frame too, with fairly little fear of discovery too. There is also a stand to put the frame in, which can also be handled by the spectator.
This trick is my current favorite of the Tenyo 2014 items. It seems like it could be very useful.
The Ghost Cards are a fun effect, and look great on video. You have a few playing cards in your hand and you push a large part of them into your face. You can retrieve the parts that disappeared from behind your head if you want to.
This trick looks good live too, if you use the little plastic cover thing included. You can do it without the cover too, but then you have to have a fairly large distance between you and the spectator or they will see how the trick is done. The plastic cover is ungimmicked and can be handed out. The cards cannot be handled by the spectator (at least not all of them), neither before you push them into your face nor after. You can push the cards into anything, but things that are soft look best (like meaty parts of your body). The angles are pretty good, though the side of the cards have to be covered at some times. You can have people standing behind you without them seeing how the trick is done (though they will not see the effect either), unless you want to produce the cards from behind your head (which you could still do depending on what clothes you wear).
Today I got bored and decided to redo my video of the "producing a baguette from a suspicious looking hand" magic trick. I like this magic trick but rarely perform it. I have done it less than 10 times I think. I have problems coming up with an interesting story for presenting this trick.
Last year at Halloween I dressed up as a zombie and visited the magic "snack bar" Ropossa here in Sapporo. They asked me to hammer a nail into my nose (and to drink tomato juice, bite people, eat gooey stuff, etc. etc.) so I ended up doing a card trick.
I had a card selected. Then I tried to determine what card was selected through mind reading. Sadly, the reception was not that great, so an antenna was needed. I took out an antenna that looked quite a lot like a normal nail. Since mind reading is done with the brain, the antenna had to be hammered into the head to reach the brain. Once the antenna was attached, the reception became clearer and I could correctly determine the selected card.
The card parts are completely missing from the movie, however, so it just looks like a weird person hammering a nail into their nose for no reason. With blood all over them... But there was a completely logical reason for all of this!
Recently we have not had any "magic mania" meetings. I have been busy at work (and sick) so I have not practiced much new stuff. The most "mania" of the staff in our magic bar quit a few months ago and now works in a "normal" bar, so we do not meet as much anymore. My most "mania" friend found himself a girlfriend, so now we see each other only once every two months or so. So everyone coming together at the same time for magic mania meetings do not happen very much anymore.
People sometimes tell me they liked our magic clips on YouTube and want me to upload new stuff. These complaints have increased lately, so I went over to one of our magic bars at a time when they did not have anything to do, and asked a friend to record me doing some new silly tricks that I recently have become fond of. These are not of the "mania" type, but more of a "joke" type. Still, I felt I should upload something, so here they are.
The first clip here is a trick I practiced quite a long time ago and like very much. I have not been performing it very much (not at all, more or less), though. Recently I have started performing it in our magic bar. After we relocated, we now have a very low counter, so people can actually see my legs. I like the trick, but it is very short, so I usually play it off as a joke about optical illusions, and how a trick of your eyes makes the pen look rubbery and in a less known trick of your eyes also makes the pen look like a coin.
The next clip is my version of spoon bending. When I showed it to the "mama" at the "magic snack bar" Ropossa, who is very very good at "normal" spoon bending (she has bent tens of thousands of spoons), she thought it was very funny. She even gave me some spoons to play with. It is a very very quick trick. I tried to go for a heart shape of the bent spoon, but that turned out to be more difficult than I had imagined, so in the end I gave up and the spoon is not really that heart shaped.
Another optical illusion type of magic trick is showing a pen (or cigarette, or anything, really, but pens and cigarettes are the most common) and covering it with your hand so it looks shorter. Using this as a setup, I made a joke trick where a pen (and a spoon) "looks smaller". I think it is pretty funny, but I have not really used it other than as a joke for other magicians.
Finally, the "mama" of Ropossa also gave me a magic prop that makes a pen shrink. The normal (intended) way of using it is completely different. If I understand correctly you use a handkerchief and make a pen small. I use the prop to illustrate the same optical illusion as above, where a pen looks shorter. Then I explain that I actually used a trick pen, and how you can make it long again. I only got the pen, no instructions and no handkerchief (and possibly there was one more tool included that I also did not get).
Recently this type of fork bending (which is most often used as a gag) is quite popular in Sapporo. I like joke props too, so I bought myself one. But looking at a movie clip like this it looks more like a real magic trick than a joke. Which is also good, haha.
Since I buy lots of magic props from Tenyo (sponge Pikachu etc.) I get lots of the little marks from their "plus one campaign" and I mailed in three marks last month too. This year the plus one campaign free magic prop is a set of sushi cards. With these sushi cards you can do three different magic tricks. All are mentalism type effects, where you predict something or you determine what type of sushi the spectator picked.
Yesterday I shot a movie of two of the tricks you can do. When we shot this movie, my cameraman also had to be the spectator, so he had to shuffle plates of sushi while holding the camera. This is why the shuffling is a bit slow, and the camera work a bit shaky.
The sushi cards represent conveyor belt sushi, with plates of different sushi. In the first trick the magician is looking away and the spectator simulates the conveyor belt by taking one plate at a time to the bottom. When a sushi he likes appears, he takes that off the conveyor belt. Putting both the selected sushi and the rest of the plates upside down, the magician can determine which sushi was chosen.
In the next trick, the spectator selects a place to start with all plates being upside down. After creating two piles of plates, the spectator can shuffle both piles freely. The magician then asks which sushi type the spectator prefers of the two types that ended up at the bottoms of the packs. After reordering the packs again, the spectator selects one more sushi that goes well with the first one he selected. After that the spectator can shuffle the plates again, and the magician then determines which two sushi plates were selected.
There is one more trick described in the sushi magic set, which is a mathematical trick. You place sushi plates in a ring, make a prediction, and the spectator then names any number from 1 to 9, and your predicted sushi turns out to be correct.
The cards are pretty nice, and the magic tricks are very easy to do. I have only tried them a few times, but the reactions have been fairly positive so far. No one seems to understand the workings of the tricks, and using sushi makes things more interesting that doing the same trick with regular cards.
Today I got a new toy in the mail: bread that appears out of your suspicious looking hand. I hope people will think this gag is as funny as I did when I first saw it.
I was a bit bored tonight and ended up shooting two practice movies of me trying out some new magic tricks. I want to learn needle swallowing, because it just seems fun. I still have not figured out a good presentation idea for it, though. I also tried pulling a string out of my eye. I have several ideas for presentations for that, but it turned out to hurt quite a lot. This is a bit worrisome when it is my eye that hurts... If it was just pain on some body part I do not care so much about, I would do it anyway, haha.
I buy a lot of magic props from the Japanese maker Tenyo. Mostly I buy their cute sponges. They have a "plus one" campaign, which means that you get a small stamp with all their products. If you send them three stamps and 200 yen in regular postage stamps, they send you a special magic trick.
Last year, I received the "Mind Roulette" magic trick. Yesterday, I received the 2012 trick, which is a card trick called "Charisma". I uploaded a video of me doing the trick to YouTube.
Today I went to one of our magic bars to talk about The Walking Dead (which just finished its second season here in Japan yesterday) with one of my colleagues there. There were lots of magic maniacs there, though, so we did not have much chance to talk about TV shows. Instead, I managed to get a nice clip showing one of my friends doing a funny routine with flies.
Recently I have been extremely busy at work and not had time to practice any new magic. Yesterday I started practicing hammering a nail into my nose, though. It is fun, but I am not sure where I can perform this. Not in front of children, at least... And most people will probably just be grossed out. But I like it!
Today I ran into a guy I know since about a year ago who also does magic. I forced him to do a trick for the camera, and put it up on YouTube.
He is a big fan of Akira Fujii, just liek one of my other maniac friends. He was even dressed like Fujii-san today! (Hat, shirt, vest :-) He showed me the Sidewinder move from Fujii-san's DVD.
My friend felt lonely when we did not have a magic mania meeting, and he wanted to make some movie clips despite no one else being there. I uploaded three clips, his card control (palm shift), his cover pass, and his linking cigarettes. Something that is quite funny is that every time we record some movies with him, he is wearing the exact same shirt. He claims it is just a coincidence, but I am starting to believe he has only one shirt :-)
