Magic bars Nishioka and Red Carpet in Fukuoka

Hiro of Red Carpet, with a real live mouse that appeared mysteriously.

On the night I arrived in Fukuoka, I had nothing special to do, so I visited two magic bars. One is called Nishioka and is one of the bars with the longest history in Japan. It has been running for over 40 years they told me. It had a very long bar counter, and the night I was there there were three magicians performing. They all came and performed for me when I was there alone (I was early so there were no other customers there at first) and then I looked on from the side when they performed for a group of people sitting next to me later.

The son of the founder of Nishioka told me that he was not ready and had not put on his photo smile when I took this photo, he wanted me to say "1, 2, 3..."

This is the photo when he was ready... not a huge difference.

They were all very nice and funny. They were good, of course. They did many of the old classics of magic, which is a good choice I think. For the group sitting next to me, at least two of the magicians did a watch steal, and since only one girl in the group was wearing a watch, she had her watch taken several times without noticing anything. The second time that I saw, she said: "Oh no, not again!?" when the magician produced her watch from some strange place.

I also went to the magic bar Red Carpet, which is just 1 minutes walk from Nishioka. The owner of Red Carpet is a friend of the owner of our magic bar in Sapporo, and I had met him before when he was visiting Sapporo. There was only one other guest there when I arrived, and he also did magic apparently. Hiro, the master of Red Carpet, did a full magic show for the two of us anyway, which was very kind of him. I went back the next day too, since Hiro said we should go out and have something to eat together after he finished in the magic bar. The next night the place was full, and I watched the show from behind a line of other guests. He did a lot of funny and impressive magic tricks.