I am really staring to miss my magic library. When I worked for Tony Eng at his shop “Tony’s Trick and Joke Shop” I collected many magic books over the years. I would end up spending all my pay on magic stuff and books. Now living in Japan the majority of my magic library is still in Canada and I wish I had here! However at times I have my mother send me some of the lighter books to me. Next time when I head back to Canada I will bring an extra suitcase and fill it up. This week I ask my mother to send me Michael Weber’s Life Savers and Aaron Fisher’s The Paper Engine. I asked my mother to send these two because one, they are not so thick and heavy and second they have a lot of great material. I want my Tarbell Course, my Pallbearer collection books, Paul Harris Arts of Astonishment series plus many more but they are so heavy! For now I will read through these books, as I have not read them over in about 7 years. They should fill my recent need to read magic books for the next few weeks.
Back in Canada I loved having my good close by because whenever I had an idea, I would go searching through them for ideas, and material that would fit the idea I had and I really miss that now. I remember when I would read a magic book and it would reference another book I would to then next to get a hold of those.
One other book I would love to have with me here is my reprinted copy of Greater Magic. That book is a old but it is a goldmine of information. I think I need to start planing another trip home partly so I can bring these great books back with me! Until then all I can do is say thank you mom for putting up with my requests and having you search through my library for the books I ask for!
This weekend I came another cool find at the library. The book is called Magic Goods Collection by Masayoshi Tsuchiya. It is of course in Japanese and is about magic collectables. It contains a lot of explanations as well as pictures of many magic collectables from North America, Europe and of course Japan. The Japanese memorabilia is the most interesting part of the book for me as many other books I have come across don’t have a lot of detailed information on Japanese magic collectables. The books covers many aspects of magic collection from books, posters, magic sets and magic props and other magic related goods. I will probably will end up buying a copy of this book.
Last month at the Shikoku Magic Friends Magic Club we decided to give everyone “homework” from the book The Encyclopedia of Card Magic which is different from the magic book of the same name in English. One of the members choose randomly pages from the book and assigned each of us an effect . Then last night we all performed then taught the effects we studied from the book. It was a great success and really showed how many great effects are contained in books that many of us overlook. So we decided to do it again for next month. The effect that I leaned and performed is something that I will keep doing and will add to my close-up show. It is a great effect half magic half mentalism. Next month as well we will have our annual public magic show. I am looking forward to next month!
Today I went into Takamatsu the capital city of Kagawa Prefecture for a show I had to do at a Cafe. The show was well, interesting as I thought when I originally booked it ( I knew it was going to be a challenge). Was not easy but went over well. 25 years of experience got me through this one. The show was well received but I was burnt out. I’ll leave this story for another day. Anyways, I wanted to visit the magic shop in Tamakatsu but it was closed. I had some time before the show so I went by. I always seem to get there when it is closed. Eventually I will get to the shop when it is open. Magic Pot is the magic company here on Shikoku that puts on the Shikoku Magic Convention as well as many other magic events and run the magic bar chain “Tejinaya” on Shikoku and the Chugoku area of Japan. This year the convention is in Takamatsu again and will be held in May. Once I know more information about this years convention I will post it! I hope they get the same venue as last year because it was very good. I also dropped by one of the big book stores there and WOW they had a lot of Japanese translations of influential magic books usually found only at magic shops such as the Card College series, books by Derek Dingle and a whole lot more. When I have more time going to go back there and look through them all. Now I am going to have a hot bath and head to bed!
If you listend to my last Magic AudioBoo you will know about the magic trick a week from a magic book challenge I put out. I have already started this with other books but today I decided to drop by the local library to see what they had. They had a few basic kid’s magic books but I came across this one called The Party Magic by Hiro Sakai. Hiro Skai is a brillant Japanese Magician who recently performs under the name Dr. Leon. This books seems to have been written for beginners who just want to be able to learn some tricks for parties etc. But there seemed to be some cool effects in it. It also came with a DVD with the presentations of the effects. I havent watched the DVD or read through the book yet. I will probably not use anything from it but I will use it to work on my Japanese presentations as I can learn useful phrases from reading books like this. When I was around 9 or 10 years old I constantly took out magic books from my school’s library and the local library and I learned a lot. Anyway, You never know what kind of gold you will find at your library so head out to your local library and check out what magic books they have!
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.
