Today’s Magic AudioBoo is some magic bar stuff!

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Japanese Flag

I have written about performing in Japanese and in other languages before in my blog, but today I wanted to write a little more on the subject and this is, it is not just enough for me just to translate or write my show in Japanese but I have to take care to incorporate cultural aspects of the culture into the show. This goes for pop culture, political culture, history, and much more. The reason that this is important is that here in Japan my audience is 99.99% Japanese people. In many of the causes many of the people in a show may or may not know each other depending on the venue. In those cases it is my job to be able to connect the people in one way, with a shared common experience. This I can achieve by making some joke, or commenting on some shared Japanese cultural experience they all have and that I have. I do this by making a comment at the beginning of my show or by making a joke in my introduction. This then right off the starts makes the audience connect psychologically by connecting them to this mentioned shared cultural experience. This really breaks the ice between the audience members so that they are now “primed” to react better to my performance. It also benefits my relationship to them. One it brings me into their shared experience as well. This is very important for me in Japan as a non-Japanese performer. They seem to one find it interesting I know and understand some cultural Japanese experience that they thought that I would not possible have had. This breaks the ice between me and the audience and creates the bond of the shared experience between us. They become more relaxed with me and they start to talking to me like I am Japanese rather than a foreigner, which can be a problem for foreigners living in Japan. This technique I use for my show I also do in my real life in Japan and it has the same effect. So remember if you are performing a show in a different language in a different country make sure you add this shared cultural experience into the show it will go a long way.

Aaron

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You may have seen the video below as it went viral a few weeks back when the iPad launched here in Japan. It is magician Shinya Uchida. After this video went viral he has appeared on numerous TV programs here in Japan. Today he appeared on one that was a live broadcast. Of course he went there to perform magic with the iPad. He did a few of the effects in the video below but he had a number of new interactive effects that interacted with real world objects and the iPad with audience participation. Great creativity and I hope to see more of him in the near future. Below is the video that went viral with English subtitles. Enjoy!

Aaron

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Mental Magic

I enjoy good mentalism, and over the years have always tried to incorporate some kind of mentalism into my show. After moving to Japan in 2003, however I have had trouble integrating good mentalism into Japanese. Visual mentalism has been no problem or very simple effects, but trying to perform more sophisticated mental effects in Japanese had been difficult for me. The main reason being of course language. I can speak Japanese but many mentalism effects rely on having good language skills to be able to full control a situation. Recently I have really wanted to get back into performing mentalism again and this time in Japanese. So one way I thought to help was to learn some new mentalism effects in Japanese for the Japanese language. So I picked a book by Ichiro Araki called Mental Magic: Technical Mental magic. I will spend some time over the next few weeks learning some of the effects from this books and concentrating on the language used in Japanese to present them. My hope is that I will be able to create a simple language base where then can adapt some of my old mental magic effects to work better in Japanese and as well learn some new ones. This should be fun!

Aaron

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Magic For People!

Only June 18th and 19th I was performing at  Terushita’s Magic Bar Intiki Magician. Terushita went to Malaysia for a magic convention and some us other Shikoku Magicians took over his bar while he was gone. During the past 3 years I have not had a chance to work a full evening at a magic bar, I have done a few short spots, but not all evening like I used to do 3 times a week when I worked at the old magic bar Momentos. On Friday, June 18, I worked with my good friend Mame Jiro and a University Student Magician Shohei. Another University Student Magician Masashi came at the start of the night but had to leave and came back to help us close up. It was a great and busy night. The picture in this blog is from that night. We were so busy we were not able to take many photos at all. We opened at 7:00PM and finally left the magic bar close to 2:00AM

On Saturday June 19  we “held” the meeting of the Shikoku Magic Friends Club. We were so busy we could not actually hold a meeting. Again we were packed and a lot of people came after the Japan vrs Netherlands World Cup game. Japan lost so people came to watch magic! We had great people all all night. Magicians that performed that night were and I hope I don’t forget anyone, Mame Jiro, Shohei, Shinnotsuke, Kiniku Kun, Jack Amano, Uru, Masashi, and myself. It was good we were all there because it was that packed that we were all kept busy. Shinnotsuke and I left to head back to Ehime at 2:30AM and the last customers were still there. Thanks to Jack and Uru for closing up that night.

It was great to get back to working all night at a magic bar, I have really missed it. Recently I have only been working private events for a shorter set time, but getting behind that bar and enjoying the people like they are enjoying the magic was really good and very motivating. Going to have to do this again very soon. I want to thank Mame Jiro for letting me crash at his place Friday night.

Aaron

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Today’s Magic AudioBoo is Two Days at the magic bar.

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Today’s Magic AudioBoo is on Humidity and magic.

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Yesterday I created the first video for Inspire Magic . Have a look and enjoy!

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Inspire Magic

I would like to introduce the reworking of my parent company Aaron Jones Entertainment. I have changed the name to Inspire Magic to work better with my magic activities here in Japan and on the Internet. This web aaronjones.com site will stay the same and I will continue blogging as I normally do and update information on my shows etc. Inspire Magic will allow me to branch to other avenues of live magic performance as well as Internet magic content not to do with just my shows and activities. I will be updating the site with more content over the next while and I will have the Japanese sections up in the new week or so. There will be a section for Magicians and lots of other content for non-magicians. If you have some time have a look.

Aaron

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At the Edge of Shikoku

On  Saturday May 1, 2010 I drove with some friends to the edge of Shikoku to Sada Pass (Sada Misaki). At this spot you can see where the Pacific Ocean and the Seto Inland sea meet. Also from this spot you can see across to Kyushu. Below are pictures where you can see these 2 views. Lots of great food out there as well. I had Sashimi for lunch. This was a great day to start Golden Week here in Japan. Golden Week is a series of consecutive holidays at the beginning of May in Japan. It was a great way to relax and get away from stressful things. It’s hard to believe that people live way out to where I went but they do. After walking back from the pass there was an old lady selling wakame a kind of seaweed at the entrance of the trail. Smart lady. I hope that I will be able to make some great day trips like this in the future.

Aaron

You can see Kyushu from Shikoku!

Where the Pacific Ocean And Seto Inland sea meet.

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