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.
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.
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).
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 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.
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.
Recently I am very busy with work, and somewhat busy with rehearsals for our Christmas show (December 17). Apart from the rehearsals, not so much is happening on the magic side so the blog is kind of at a standstill. I bought a new Tenyo "The Third Eye" as a backup for when the one that people keep dropping all the time stops working.
At the rehearsals last week, I managed to fail spectacularly both times. The first time I managed to pretend to put something in my right hand (that would later disappear) but forgot to close the right hand so it was pretty obvious that there was nothing there... At the next rehearsal, which took place at a real stage with curtains, lights, and everything, I managed to not notice that my bag with all the things I was going to use during the trick had disappeared into the table somewhere while the table was being carried out onto the stage, so things did not start out great. Reaching down with the left hand to retrieve something when no one was looking, I suddenly realized that there was nothing there to retrieve... I also managed to forget the order of things that I was supposed to do, and forgot to grab my final load at the appropriate time. All in all, two funny disasters.
In our magic bar, one guy proposed to his girlfriend with support by magic during the weekend. That was a first, I think. It went well.
Yet another update on the Tenyo 2012 item "The third eye". I have been using this a lot in our magic bar lately, and it is great. Sadly, people often drop the eye when you hand it to them to put between their eyes (or when they hand it to someone else). This has led my third eye to be very glitchy. I though it was broken first, but it started working again later.
Anyway, apart from it having to be handed out to drunk people and the risk of them dropping it (breaking your expensive toy), it is highly recommended. It does not work that well with only one or two spectators, but the larger the group the greater the impact. You explain that anyone with this eye between their eyes can see where the selected card is, and when the first person to use the eye slightly suprisedly says "Yes, I can see it!" the other people get curious. They still cannot see anything out of the ordinary. You have one more person try it, and go "Ah, I see it!". People get even more excited, since they still cannot see anything. This keeps building, so the more people the better!
This weekend I tried using the Tenyo "The third eye" props in the magic bar. Someone selects (while looking at the faces) a card from a set of five (with things like "love", "money", "fame", written on them) and no one except this person knows what card is selected. The card is returned, the cards are shuffled a little, and I place the cards on a stand.
There is also a plastic eye, that when turned on blinks with a red light. I explain that this is a "magicians eye", and anyone putting this eye on their forehead can see what a magician would see. So anyone doing that can see which card is the selected card, only by watching the backs of the cards. Of course, no one else can see that, though anyone can see it if the receive the eye (and then the person who originally had the eye will no longer see it).
People found this fairly fascinating, and it works well as a fun way to kill some time. It is not a very exciting magic trick and no one is surprised by finding one selected card among five, though everyone is amazed at the properties of the magician's eye.
So my impression after using it two nights (though I did not use it with very many of our customers) is that is is a quite fun prop to use, and people like it. There is very little "wow"-factor but it is a nice piece. Possibly there are more interesting presentations you can use it for too.
When moving from one magic bar to another in Osaka, I spotted some kids playing with the butterfly in a jar item from the Tenyo magic dealer! So I figured I would have to take a picture.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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) buthas very generous angles from which to watch the cards, and you can just turn the display to face the spectator in extreme casesand the angles are forgiving enough so that it is very easynot 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.
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.
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 :-)
