This Tokyo bar will have you hooked. Literally.

Magical belly button (The Incredible Bezoar) is a hypnotic coffee bar in Shinjuku, so named because “the belly button is where we were once connected to our mothers through the umbilical cord. It’s a symbol of the center of the body, the core of the body,” explains bar owner and hypnotist Mr. Endo. “It’s also very Google-friendly. You search for ‘Fushigi no Heso’ and my bar will be the first place that comes up,” he adds with a laugh.

Add a little hypnosis to your drink

For just 1,000 yen per person, people between the ages of 20 and 40 can have Mr. Endo perform hypnosis on them. Since I would soon be ineligible for this experience, I decided now was the time to give it a try. After some testing and preparation, we began with our eyes closed, and Mr. Endo put my hands together as if in prayer, then squeezed my arms in several places and told me that from now on, I could no longer separate my hands. This did not work.

I was adamant about not “playing” with him and was trying to determine if I could actually be hypnotized so I could get my hands dirty. Mr. Endo didn’t seem to mind and tried something new, moving his fingers in front of my lips like a zipper and telling me I couldn’t talk anymore. I said “I’m sorry” to him.

Without a care in the world, he closed my eyes and announced that I would never be able to open them again. I was ready to apologize to him. The problem was that I couldn’t open my eyes. I was fully awake, but the “open eyes” signal that my brain normally sends to my facial muscles wasn’t getting through to me.

It only lasted a few seconds, and I was finally able to open my eyes, but there was still a slight struggle at the end. I don’t know if it was something in his voice, but for a brief moment I didn’t have full control of my body. That seemed to break the seal.

In the next exercise, Endo-san pressed my drink down and said it now weighed several hundred kilograms, and as before, for the first few seconds this part of my body was foreign to me. My hand was convinced that the glass really did weigh a ton, until finally my consciousness broke through and I was able to lift it.

How does Mr. Endo’s hypnosis work?

“Being in hypnosis is like a different state of consciousness,” Mr. Endo explained before we began. “It’s like a runner’s high. When your mind starts functioning in a different way, your body is able to do things that aren’t usual. It’s a bit like that.”

The phrase he kept using was “the zone,” when people can perform great feats without thinking. This is common among athletes or actors, who can clear their minds of all unnecessary thoughts, shoot a perfect three-pointer, or cry at any moment.

According to Mr. Endo, they are the easiest people to hypnotize because they are used to “entering different areas of consciousness,” which is apparently the essence of hypnosis.

Now writing this, I wonder if Mr. Endo’s explanation was tailor-made for me. I am skeptical by nature, and although I came to the bar with an open mind and wholeheartedly wanted to do justice to this experience, there was still a part of me that doubted.

Maybe Mr. Endo could sense this. In a profession like his, reading minds is a vital skill, so maybe something told him that I needed to hear an actual explanation based in reality. I knew about “the zone” from years of endurance swimming. I knew it was real. So maybe the same could be said about hypnosis? Maybe this was the primer that made this whole experience possible.

After practicing raising the glass, we paused, and Endo-san announced with regret that this was the best he could do.

“Hypnosis is a very personal experience. It works for some people, but not always,” he said. “For Americans, only about 10-15% of people can be hypnotized. For Europeans, it’s 20-25%. But for Japanese and other Asian people, it can be 70-80%. It’s all cultural. Westerners are very decisive. They think in black and white. Yes or no. This or that. But we Japanese think in gray. We are willing to change our minds.”

This is why Mr. Endo doesn’t like to work with people over 40. At that age, many of your personality traits become fixed, and it becomes more difficult to get into the state. However, if I were still in my 20s, I would probably be below the first level.

“The first level is controlling a person’s movements,” he claimed. “When you’re there, you can tell someone not to move, or that they can’t lift a small object. Go a little deeper and you get to the second level. There, you can control a person’s feelings.

“You can make them not feel the cold of ice glass or anything like that,” he continued. “The third and deepest level is memory. When you’re in the memory level, you can basically do anything. I have to be really careful when I’m in the memory level. I can make you forget your father’s name.”

I’m still not sure I believe this. But after experiencing hypnosis myself, I’m probably less skeptical than I was before visiting Wonder Belly Button. Unfortunately, you need to know Japanese to know how deep you can go, as the experience can’t be translated. We checked.

As Mr. Endo says, “Hypnosis is the language.” If you speak Japanese and decide to give it a try, but it doesn’t work out, Wonder Belly Button also offers a drinks and food menu as well as e-shisha. It also offers tarot readings and energy stone sales, so, anyway, maybe you’ll find a little magic there.

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