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.
In Paris I stayed in a hotel that was a 3 minute walk from the magic shop "Mayette Magie Moderne". This is said to be the oldest magic shop in the world, and they have been in business for more than 100 years. Currently the shop is owned by Dominique Duvivier and apart from the products every magic shop sells, they also of course have the complete collection of things that Duvivier has created.
The shop was smaller than Magic Dream, but it was also busy with lots of customers. There were families there buying props for their kids to use, there was a middle aged woman there buying a very large close-up mat, and many more.
I went to Paris for a conference and found some time to visit the magic shop "Magic Dream". The shop was quite large, and it was full of people. People kept coming and going, but there was always quite a lot of people there.
I found some magic props made in Japan, with Japanese explanations. That would be fine for me, but I would guess that most people in Paris do not read Japanese. I found some funny pens that are made in Japan that I have been wanting to buy but that are generally sold out in Japan. In Paris they were on sale, 50% off, so I bought two sets.
Finally, I bought a set of cards that you can use to do lots of different cute tricks, like show a drawing of a sheep, pull out some cotton from the card, and show that the drawing is now of a shaved sheep, things like that. This was a product they had designed themselves, if I understood correctly.
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).
I went to the the "snack bar" Ropossa, where the mama does magic. They also have endless amounts of interesting toys. Both things they have bought and things that some of their regulars have made themselves.
This time I was shown a very interesting handkerchief. You can crumble it up and the just shake it in your hand or throw it in the air, and it returns to its origami crane shape. Apparently only made using two layers of stretchable cloth stuck together in a certain way.
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.
On Friday night we had lots of nice customers in our magic bar. We also had some customers that I would not describe as nice. After performing for a group of around 20 or so, no less than three sponge rabbits that I had used ended up missing. Sometimes they get dropped on the floor and I find them after the guests have left, sometimes people hide them but most people return them when I say "Some rabbits seem to have gone missing... please return them to me before you leave if you see them." On Friday, three rabbits never came back. One more rabbit also lost its head.
People being fascinated enough by some magic trick that they take some of your stuff with them when they leave is quite rare (unless stuff that you explicitly give away of course) but it sometimes happens. Losing three rabbits in one performance (four if you count the one that lost its head) is a new record for me.
Luckily enough, on Saturday one guy gave me a 1000 yen tip (we have a magic charge in our bar, so people are not expected to tip, though sometimes people who are especially impressed or who want to impress the people they came with by showing that they spend lots of money do) which is almost exactly what it will cost to replace the four lost rabbits. So it all evens out in the end.
Today I stopped by our local magic shop and the owner showed me the new Tenyo items for 2013. They were all pretty cool. I bought three out of the four new items, so I will write more when I have had time to play with them a bit.
The one I was most interested in was the memo pad thing where you write an image of a cup on a paper and then make coins disappear by putting them in the cup. The gimmick was not at all what I though it would be, and it is quite clever. There are some angle problems from the sides (and back, of course), and you cannot hand out the memo pad. You can tear off the paper with the drawing and hand that out if you like, though.
The cut up card that becomes whole was impressive. The weird glass jar thing that comes with it looks very suspicious, but you can do it on a close up mat too, at least if the light is not too bright. Ends very clean (at least the card) so most of the things that people might want to check later can be checked. Again, the gimmick was not what I expected.
The coin through glass looks very nice. You can use any glass (that has an appropriate size). There are similar products that do the same thing (probably using the same principle) but this one looks very nice and you can hand the spectator everything and they might still not see the tricky parts (though they could if they hold one of the items in a specific way).
The envelope that money comes out of was also not exactly what I expected. I expected it to just be a slit, but it was a little bit more than that. The other part of the trick was quite clever actually, and not something I had ever thought of. You cannot hand out anything except the money that comes out but you can show everything very cleanly before and after. I did not buy the envelope trick since I cannot see myself performing this trick.
After 9 hours of work, the face paint has degraded but still looks pretty OK.
This year there were a lot of Halloween parties on the 27th here in Sapporo. The 27th was a Saturday so I was scheduled to work in our magic bar and did not have time to go any parties. I figured that if we were not busy, I might sneak out early and go to the last part of some party, though. So I dressed up as a zombie magician and went to work like that.
I also built a sponge dove to use as a zombie magician's sponge dove. I have a sponge dove but did not want to ruin it so I made a home made one instead. It turns out that if you smear a sponge dove in fake blood (I make my fake blood from syrup and food coloring) it does not get back into dove shape after being hidden in your hand... the fake blood is too sticky. Also, your hands get really sticky... So I am rethinking that part and think maybe using red paint could work instead.
I saw a clip of a guy showing a card that changed its text or picture just by moving it. My guess is that he was using lenticular film on the card, and that is a great idea. Possibly. It might also be completely obvious to everyone else watching, at least in good lighting... So I want to make my own prop like that with something funny written in Japanese. I went around to a bunch of stores that might sell this kind of stuff, but none sell lenticular film... But I did find post cards with such film, so I bought one and started peeling off the back. Not the smoothest way to make props, but it should be enough to make a first prototype at least.
My boss in the magic bar has started taking pills that help with your magic. They are very funny. It says on the can that if you have problems with "Forgetting you routine", "Shaking hands", or other problems common to magicians, this will help. Effects include "making people laugh even when you make mistakes", "no problems dealing with children or drunkards", "fewer people saying 'I know that trick', 'I saw that!' or similar things", and other things.
The content list is also funny. It contains among other things "54 decks of Zarrow-shuffle-natrium", "Dai-Vernon-soda", and many other things (that are all puns in Japanese).
