What I find to be the most amazing thing with this video is how it so masterfully shows the difference in culture between Japan and say the UK or the US. If this had been on say X-factor he would have gotten 3 red X in the first 20 seconds. They really have a completely different outlook on mastery of skills. That is what makes the Japanese talent shows and game shows so much better.

I forgot to *Promote this great balancing act. Hopefully it tips it over the edge

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 6:33am PST - promote requested by LarsaruS.

That's a heavy feather!

The grace and economy of motion is superb. Very well done performance.

*music

Adding video to channels (Music) - requested by ant.

He's from Switzerland?

Whoa, 82K and change he won for that...

So much better like saaay, The Silent Library??

Not to ruin the magic, but at 1:41 doesn't that look like a loop of wire securing one of the sticks?

Edit: Never mind, there are just really strong shadows from the spotlights. There's nothing to distract from how impressive that was.

The only "cheat" I could see was the grooved end on the final, vertical balance stick, and to be quite honest, I doubt it would have been possible otherwise. It also wasn't that much of a groove.

Sweet act, never seen anything quite like that.

I do wonder if he added weight to the feather; wouldn't be hard to stick something in the shaft of it. Great showmanship though, could have done it with a little twig, but a feather is way more interesting and gives the crowd something to focus on.

http://videosift.com/video/Mysterious-Man-Balances-Sticks

That would be a horrible way to cheat, since the heavier the feather is, the heavier the entire thing will be, every stick has to be heavier and/or longer to counterweight all the previous sticks. Someone more clever than me needs to work out the formula, which is hard, since he places every stick off-center for the proper leverage. But bottom line is, that if the feather was heavy, he would have 3 problems: Combined weight, length of sticks increasing and/or large, clumpy counterweights on each stick, making them hard to manuver.

The one "cheat" I can see him using, is tiny markings on each stick, indicating where they should be placed for ideal balance. However this means that hes either a)done lots of math to work that out or b) done hundreds of attemps, or , perhaps most likely c) both.

No matter how you look at it, this is both impressive and beautiful on so many levels.

I think it's a little unfair to judge the entirety of US culture off of the worst things that we ever got from the UK.

What I love is how invested everyone is in his success at balancing the feather.

The Incredible Power Of Concentration - Miyoko Shida has been added as a related post - related requested by lucky760 on that post.