Tokyo magic

Joker in a bottle

I wanted to do something fun for Jim’s birthday, but nothing too crazy for a Thursday night; a hangover on a busy, early work day isn’t much of a gift.

A few times he’d snapped cellphone pictures of lit signs outside of “magic bars,” saying “we’ve got to come back and check one of these places out sometime.” Magic bars are a thing in Tokyo. Sometime had come!
The bunch of people who agreed to come out may have had their doubts, but they all showed up at the fifth-floor bar in red-light district Kabukicho. The other establishments in the building looked like they’d make your money disappear with different kinds of tricks.

The cab dropped us off near the place, halfway between the only two places we ever go in the area: a loud, loud rock bar that we’ve never left any earlier than 3 am and a cheap karaoke bar that attracts all of the neighborhood's angriest gaijin. Jim said later he was sure we were going to one of these two and was secretly disappointed that this was the birthday surprise. But no! Up the steps of the shady building and through the door with the manga magician! The bar is called Calvados, but it says “Cuore the Magnificent” on the door. Hey everybody!

We sat at the center of a long, curved bar, and a young magician named Kokoro did close-up magic, like fork bending and card tricks. As promised, he made a birthday cake appear in a flash of fire. He took a group polaroid of us that turned out to be the end of another trick. Most confounding of all, he put a happy birthday card inside that bottle of green tea.
Another magician set up soon after with rope tricks, disappearing coins and mutilated 1000-yen bills. He taught us all how to do a disappearing tissue trick.


There was a short stage show with audience participation. It was all pretty good. Kokoro emptied a paper cup full of water that I was holding over my head. He “hypnotized” a friend into not being able to pick up a light wooden box. (Dan got him back, though, by accidentally swinging the box up to reveal the trick bottom.) The best trick was when he made a real bowling ball and pin fall out of a floppy paper notebook. Actually, the best trick was getting a guy who was in the middle of a long week and who’d had his vacation revoked, again, to grin like a kid on his 40th birthday. Shazam!