A horde of Japanese children sitting on the floor

On my flight from Fukuoka to Sapporo there was also a group of high school students going to Hokkaido for a school trip. So the plain was completely full and it took forever to get everyone boarded. They sat on the floor while waiting, for some reason. The chairs behind them seem empty and perfectly fine.

Beautiful Japanese toilet signs

This could be the most beautiful sign for explaining which toilet is for men and which is for women that I have seen so far.

Darts and Tequila in Magic bar Red Carpet

After visiting Nishioka, Hiro and I returned to Red Carpet. There I got to see another magician called Nishi do some magic. He used a Japanese 500 yen coin, which later turned into a clear glass version of a 500 yen coin. Which then kept growing and growing to larger sizes.

There were other guests there as well, and Hiro also did a big show at the counter. He did his normal impressive stuff, but he also started doing strange tricks like producing unlimited numbers of small rubber penises and making them light up. When I asked to take a photo of them, he brought out a paper bag with lights that shone along the same theme, and the camera was overwhelmed by this light so you cannot really see the magicians in the photo either. They thought that was great, but the girl sitting next to me thought it was not great, so she suggested taking another photo. The result is the top photo of this page (fairly normal).

Me and a girl I ran into 3 times in Fukuoka (during 2 days!)

This girl was one of the girls from the night before, who was there again. When all the other guests left, Hiro decided we should all play darts, in teams of two. He and Nishi are really good at darts (perhaps they spend the time when there are no guests there playing with the darts machine), I suck at darts, and the girl was very drunk and not that good at darts when sober either (she said). So as luck would have it, I was paired up with her, and we of course lost badly. The losing team then had to take shots of tequila. Then we changed teams, and repeated the process. No matter what team I was in, my team always lost, though.

After drinking lots of tequila, we changed to card games instead. We first played "babanuki" (which means almost the same as "old maid" in English, and the rules are the same as for that game). This is mainly a game of luck, so I was worried that I would be stuck with even more tequila, but I got out safely very quickly. Then they changed to games based on skill, and I was safe for the rest of the night. They thought it was impressive that I could clear the table in memory games after having lost that many times in the tequila darts games, but it was not that much alcohol, and keeping track of cards is not that hard.

In the end, it was a lot of fun, but every time I was about to leave someone would say: "What? It looks on your face as if you are about to leave. You cannot leave NOW of course!" Always for some fairly unconvincing reason. In the end, I got back to my hotel just in time to have one hour of sleep before having some hotel breakfast and going to the airport. Luckily, the flight from Fukuoka to Sapporo is quite long, so I got a lot of sleep on the plane. And then I went straight to our university to work the rest of the day too.

In the plane, I ended up sitting in the seat next to one of my colleagues also going back to Sapporo from Fukuoka. This was by chance, but not that much of a coincidence since there is pretty much only one flight to use for use in this situation, and unlike the Sapporo-Tokyo route where they fly 777s, between Fukuoka and Sapporo they fly 737s, which have much fewer seats.

In Magic bar Nishioka with another magician

After the dinner, work was finished, and I got back to my hotel at around ten in the evening. This was earlier than I had expected, but later than I had hoped. I went to say hello to magician Hiro in his magic bar Red Carpet. He suggested we should do something somewhere else first, and then come back to his place (which was still pretty empty).

We first went to a hostess club where one of the girls I had met the night before was working. She was there and was happy to see us. We got to talk to lots of hostesses, who sit next to you and drink with you and laugh at your jokes if you try to be funny. Hiro did some magic for some of them and asked me to show some of them some magic too.

I was holding a transparent plastic film in my hand when this photo was taken, taken with my own camera, no less. When we checked the photo later, there was a two of diamonds there instead.

After that, I said I was thinking of visiting another magic bar to see other magicians do magic too. I said I would go to Red Carpet and meet him there again later, but he said we could go together. So we went to the magic bar Nishioka together. All the magicians there know him, of course. I have been there once before, one and half year ago, but they still remembered me. There was a new young (well, 32 years old) magician there that neither Hiro nor me had seen before. He was very nice, and he did some fun magic. We also got to see some classics of magic done by a magician who said he is 70 years old, and some magic that is just incredibly difficult to not be fooled by even if you are a magician done by a magician who taught Hiro magic when he was starting to learn magic. Very impressive.

Kyushu University new campus

By riding the subway to the end of the line, changing to a train for an even longer trip, and then getting on a local bus, I finally managed to reach the new campus of Kyushu University, where our meeting was to be held. It was a very nice campus, and you could see beaches from the train on the way there (no one was swimming in November, despite it being like a cool summer day in Sweden, when lots of people swim). They were still reconstructing the shape of the mountains to erect more buildings.

Our meeting was the usual, people from the other groups in our big project where we cooperate reported on what they have been doing recently (and we did the same, of course), and everyone talks about who should do what in the future. I had to do a presentation too, but since I have not really done anything relevant to this project lately I had been asked to show the same thing I showed to the same people last time, which always makes me feel like I am wasting their time. I tried to show some new things, but there was not that much to show.

There was also a dinner, with buffet style Italian food. The pizzas were great. The pasta was good. The rest was also good, actually. I ate way too much. I talked to several researchers that I have been in the same room with before, but who I had never really talked to. One of them used to visit Stockholm (where I am from) several times per year to discuss cell phone standards many years ago, he said.

Sumo wrestlers taking the bus

Fukuoka has a fairly good subway system, but lots and lots of people also ride buses. I was planning to take a bus to the place of our meeting, but there were too many others with the same idea, so I would not get there on time by bus, I was told by the old man helping people. I saw some sumo wrestlers getting on a bus, though.

Meeting Shinpei Ogawa in Magic bar Red Carpet

Me, Shinpei Ogawa, Hiro

Before going to sleep I also visited the magic bar Red Carpet. Magician U in Fushigiya had called magician Hiro in Red Carpet to talk about me. When I said I was from Sapporo he thought that maybe I knew Hiro, since he visited Sapporo (and we met at that time). I have met Hiro several times, and he is good friends with the owner of our magic bar in Sapporo. I visited Red Carpet last time I was in Fukuoka too.

When I got there, the magician Shinpei Ogawa was sitting at the counter. He is very famous in Japan. I do not know why he was visiting Fukuoka (he lives in Nagasaki, I think), but he and Hiro are friends. We talked for a while, but he was about to leave when I got there, so we did not have that much time. He showed me a card trick, and I tried to do my usual thing with the broken iPhone plunger. I asked if it would be OK to take a photo together, so we did that.

Later, Hiro showed me some tips about doing the plunger trick in a different way. Some of it was very clever, some of it was very funny. Suddenly a lot of very drunk people came in and wanted to see magic, so I moved to a table and they got to occupy the whole counter. Hiro did magic for them, and I ended up talking to two girls that said they come to Red Carpet very often. They were very funny.

They really like magic. By chance, someone had taken them to Red Carpet and then they had just been blown away and started coming there all the time. They watched the magic Hiro did at the counter, and I saw most of it too. Cards, cigarettes, eggs, drawing duplications, all kinds of fun magic was performed, often to music.

Hiro suggested that the next day we could go and visit the place where these girls work, but one of them said she was not working the next day. I said I had no idea if I would have time (sometimes our meetings seem endless, and my flight the morning after that was really early). I left and said I would at least stop by in Red Carpet and say hello the next day too.

Broken plunger

A guy who saw me do a magic trick with my little iPhone stand plunger managed to break it by furiously sticking the plunger to all kinds of things and ripping it off. I have more (and they are cheap), but I have only one more in this color (my favorite color), and I had only brought one to Fukuoka. A magician friend of mine lent me some glue, which made it stick well enough that you can do the trick I use it for, but if you stick the plunger to the table it will come apart again because the plunger is stronger than the glue.

Santas fixing the lights

I passed by a group of workers decorating giant Christmas trees. They were all wearing Santa-suits.

Magic bar Fushigiya and Casual bar Alice Style

Me, an Alice, and three people I had never met that were very friendly

When I travel I try to find time to go see other people do magic. I like magic, and it is also educational to see how other people present standard tricks or see original things they may be doing.

In Fukuoka there are several magic bars. I had been to two of them before and decided to go to another one for a few hours before I had to get back to my hotel to be able to get up early for work the next day. I went to Fushigiya, which means "the place of strange things".

The first challenge was to get through the door. Many magic bars have weird doors that do not open the way you would think, so you have to solve a puzzle before you even get in. I am told some do this on purpose so they can avoid getting people who are too drunk to be interesting as customers. I find it mostly annoying, but the intention seems to be a clever and funny puzzle. I have had to navigate through doors where the handle is on the wrong side of the door and you have to push on the other side, a door that opens only in the middle of what looks like a door, etc.

For some reason, there is a lifelike doll in the bar that has different clothes every time you visit (unless you visit too often in a short time)

Once inside, I met one of their regulars and the magician U. He showed me some magic and his style was quite different from most other magic bars. He also used pretty original props. He showed me some cigarette magic, some cup and balls stuff, some rope magic, and a trick with an egg. We also talked about magic and magicians.

A real (but dead) bat

After a while he said that since no one else was coming, we should go downstairs to the newly opened bar Alice Style, which he also owns (if I understood correctly). Right then, three new customers showed up, but in the end we brought them with us too, and we all went down to Alice Style to see the magic there instead.

Me and U

In Alice Style there was a young girl dressed as Alice in Wonderland who turned out to be from the same small village in the middle of nowhere as the three people we had come there with, so they talked about that for a long time. We also got to see quite a lot of magic, and there was a guy who does magic as a hobby drinking in the bar too. U asked him to show something, and he did. Then I was asked to do something, so I did two tricks that went over very well (they usually do). Later, another hobbyist came and he was also asked to show something.

Magician U of course did most of the magic, though. He did the cup and balls with cups of potato chips again, he did some magic with tissues, with chopsticks, and more. It was a lot of fun. The girl dressed as Alice was cute and funny, and the other girl working there was even cuter (no idea if she was funny; she was busy talking to a customer at the other end of the bar the whole night), and the bartenders working there were very nice too. Magicia U was funny and nice. And the place looked nice. And the other guests were nice too. The only downside was that one drunk man was so impressed with a small plunger prop (an iPhone accessory) that I used that he played with it too furiously and it broke. I have more of them, but only one more in that color (the best color), and had of course only brought one to Fukuoka.

The Happy Cock

I passed a place that someone had decided to name "The Happy Cock". Not sure what kind of place it was, but it looked like a bar.

Fukuoka

On Monday I had to fly to Fukuoka to be at a meeting ridiculously early on Tuesday morning. Fukuoka is far south from Sapporo. We had snow falling in Sapporo when I left, but in Fukuoka it was 18 degrees Celsius, which is like an OK but slightly cool summer day in Sweden... So I walked around in t-shirt. I had some Hakata ramen in a food stall near one of the rivers, which was nice.

Midnight udon

After Hiro-san finished up in his magic bar the Red Carpet, he took me to eat udon at 3 a.m. Perhaps not the best way to lose weight, but it was very good udon. It had ginger (not common) and lots of meat.

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.

Fukuoka

Fukuoka tower far away.

Fukuoka tower far away, at night.

On my first ever visit to the Kyushu island, I did not have much time to spend freely (work related trips are like that for us). I did have some time to walk around during the nights, and during the lunch break.

A heron or something flying above one of the many rivers.

A boat and an umbrella in a very old and traditional style.

Fukuoka was warm, and full of rivers. The public transportation was super convenient. The airport is located at one of the subway stations, and the subway takes you from the airport to the big train station in 10 minutes, from there on to the entertainment district in another 10 minutes, and then 5 minutes more and you are in the shopping district. The subway can also take you to the big sightseeing spots (that I did not have time to visit) like parks and the Fukuoka tower, and to the harbor if you want to take a ship to Korea or Osaka.

Our meeting was close to the Yahoo dome, some baseball thing.

Fukuoka also seems to have a nice climate. I was told that it is even less hot than Sapporo during the summers, and it is never cold during the winters. The food was good too.

Ramen, famous in Fukuoka

The entertainment and redlight district.