It has been a while since I have last blogged! The reason is I have been preparing for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test N1. N1 is the most difficult but it has been my to pass this since I started studying Japanese. I took the test yesterday Dec 4, 2011. I may or may not have passed this time but I did improve my Japanese skill a bit during my recent study. However now that the test is done I will take a short brake from studying and get back to my normal blogging!
Aaron
AHHHHHHHHHH!
Today I would like to share another stupid magic story of mine. I have shared parts of this story in a post from over a year ago but today it gets it’s own post. My story has to do with forgetting what language I have to perform in. When I went to Japan in the summer of 2001 I performed my regular show except for one effect that I worked on just for Japan and of course in Japanese. I put the effect together and rehearsed before going to Japan in Japanese so I had only ever performed this effect in Japanese. In Japan the effect went over well and I still perform this effect to this day. Well, after I came home from my 2 month trip to Japan I had a stage show the next evening in my hometown in Victoria. This show was at a restaurant near my home and seemed like an easy event to do while still jet lagged. So I arrived at the venue set my stage show and then started the show. Everything was going well until I got to my final effect and this was the effect that I had performed only in Japanese. Now of course I was in Victoria BC Canada now and performing in English not Japanese. It was at this moment that I realized I had never performed this effect in English. All the timing, jokes etc. were written in Japanese for a Japanese audience. Lucky I was able to pull the effect off in English but man did I sweat. Luckily I had rehearsed the technical parts and performed it enough that this part was automatic and I just had to quickly stumble creating an English script as I performed it. As far as I know the audience didn’t notice anything but I was sure happy when I finished that effect. Lesson I learned from this is be careful if you are a bilingual performer and performing in different countries and in different language while suffering from jet lag.
Aaron
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
Japanese Magic Book
An interesting way to learn magic is learning it in another language. After living in Japan for 6 years now, I have leaned magic from Japanese magic books and Japanese magicians, of course in Japanese. This is an interesting experience. I found out you learn some interesting things when you do try to learn magic in a different language. One is I learned how to describe things I would do in my magic show that I did not learn how to do during my Japanese language education. It helps a lot that I was a already a magician because it helped me decipher the hard technical terms found in magic books that do no show up in a regular dictionary. It also taught me to be patient and take more time when learning a new effect. When reading how to do an effect or learning how to do sleights it takes A LOT longer than in your own native language. But I found this is a good thing because it forced me to analyze every detail to make sure I was doing the technique right. Learning from Japanese magic books also helped my Japanese Language performances. This is because reading from the Japanese books I learned the proper language for certain movements, and explanations.
If you are learning a second language I suggest try learning some magic from a books in that language, not only will it help you learn and practice the language your are studying but it can help your magic performing in that language and improve you English speaking magic as well.
Any comments please let me know!
Aaron